Astrophysicists studying binary stars use a program called POSYDON (POpulation SYnthesis with Detailed binary-evolution simulatiONs) to simulate binary star interactions. Studying stars directly can be time-consuming and costly, so astrophysicists often conduct primary research via simulations before verifying their results with real astronomical observations. In particular, POSYDON studies systems where two stars interact with each other.

Given the number of simulations it performs and the criteria it collects, POSYDON generates a large amount of data and stores this across numerous spreadsheet files in Comma Separated Values (CSV) format. Due to the dispersed nature of the data, there is currently no efficient way to search and analyze the information. To address this, our project will provide a software tool to import this data into a common location. Following data processing, users will be able to search collected binary star data using standard English language requests, by utilizing pre-generated queries, or by writing custom queries using Structured Query Language (SQL).

Without a tool such as this, users would have difficulty formulating their requests for obtaining particular subsets of the simulated data that satisfies their desired properties. Specifically, for every desired query, a complex program will need to be constructed - as opposed to having a compact, high-level language providing a declarative ("what") without the need for procedural ("how") details. By simplifying data access and supporting custom data, this project aims to make binary star data querying more accessible to students, educators, and researchers, allowing for greater collaboration. In addition, similar queries can be reused almost verbatim by changing the values in their parameters.