* All plenary sessions to be held in the Congress Hall

Tutorial 1: The Ins and Outs (and everything in between) of Data Warehousing

Donovan Schneider
Tuesday, August 26, 09:00 - 12:30, Congress Hall
Session chair: Ken Ross (USA)

Data warehousing fever is sweeping through the database community, both in industry and academia. This has been fueled by analyst projections of a market value of $8 billion by the year 2000. However, there is a large degree of confusion about what is and isn't data warehousing. Terms such as OLAP, Decision Support (DSS), and data warehousing are used interchangeably although people have widely varying interpretations for each of these terms. This tutorial seeks to provide clarity to the current confusion by focusing on the following five core functions of a data warehouse: Data Extraction and Preparation (getting data into the warehouse), Data Modeling and Schema Design, Data storage within the warehouse, Data access within the warehouse, Client analysis and applications. Similarities and differences between OLTP and data warehousing systems will be highlighted. Furthermore, emphasis will be placed on discussing features of database vendors' products, as well as on-going research projects. Open research problems at all levels will be discussed. Examples derived from data warehousing customers will be used heavily in the presentation.

This tutorial is targeted at database researchers as well as practitioners. The research community will be served by learning about all of the different aspects of data warehousing, from data extraction from an operational system, to data modeling, to client analysis. Emphasis will be placed on identifying open research problems in each of these areas. Practitioners will be served by getting a broader and more technical overview to the warehousing arena and its primary differences from OLTP, as well as learning about techniques employed by various database vendors.

DONOVAN SCHNEIDER is a Senior Staff Engineer at Red Brick Systems, Inc. From Sept. 1990 to Nov. 1994, he was a Member of Technical Staff at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto where he worked on a number of research projects involving parallel query processing. Dr. Schneider received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1990 for his work on parallel join query processing in the Gamma database machine. He has published over 20 research papers, served on numerous program committees including SIGMOD, VLDB, PDIS, and Data Engineering, and was the editor for SIGMOD '95. He received the Best Paper Award at SIGMOD in 1990.

Tutorial 2: Geographic Information Systems

Hanan Samet
Tuesday, August 26, 09:00 - 12:30, Foyer
Session chair: Tok Wang Ling (Singapore)

The objective of this tutorial is to introduce and understand the technical issues behind current and emerging developments in geographic information systems (GIS). The implementation of such systems combines techniques from image processing, pattern recognition, computer graphics, cartography, databases, and graphical user interfaces. Attendees will gain an appreciation of the common underlying concepts and also their relationship to issues that arise in the related fields. Topics include systems, problems, data structures, and algorithms. They will also learn how they are addressed in a some commercial systems and see a demonstration of their use in a research prototype. The focus will be on simplicity, differences between competing approaches, and how to perform a proper evaluation.

HANAN SAMET is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is a member of the Computer Vision Laboratory of the Center for Automation Research and also has an appointment in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies. At the Computer Vision Laboratory he leads a number of research projects on the use of hierarchical data structures for geographic information systems. His research group has developed the QUILT system which is a GIS based on hierarchical spatial data structures such as quadtrees and octree, and the SAND system which integrates spatial and non-spatial data. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1975. During that time he was a Research Assistant at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Project. His doctoral dissertation dealt with proving the correctness of translations of LISP programs. Between 1978 and 1980 he was also affiliated with the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California where he worked on an extension of this research. He spent part of 1982 at the National University of Singapore, and part of 1989 at the Basic Research Laboratory of NTT in Tokyo, Japan. In 1992 he was a visiting professor at the University of Pavia in Italy. He has consulted for a number of industrial and government organizations and has conducted numerous short courses, seminars, and tutorials on geographic information systems, spatial data structures, LISP, and artificial intelligence. He has written over 125 technical publications on the subjects of hierarchical spatial data structures, geographic information systems, image processing, computer graphics, programming languages, artificial intelligence, robotics, and data base management systems. He is considered as an authority on the use and design of hierarchical spatial data structures such as the quadtree for geographic information systems, image processing, and computer graphics. He is an Area Editor of "Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing: Graphical Models and Image Processing". He is on the Editorial Board of "Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing: Image Understanding", "Journal of Visual Languages", "Pattern Recognition", "GeoInformatica", and "Transactions on GIS". He is the author of the two books "The Design and Analysis of Spatial Data Structures" and "Applications of Spatial Data Structures: Computer Graphics, Image Processing and GIS" published by Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1990. He is a Fellow of the ACM, IEEE, and the IAPR (International Association of Pattern Recognition).

Tutorial 3: Object-Relational Database Systems - Principles, Products, and Challenges

Krishna Kulkarni, Nelson Mattos, Anil K. Nori
Tuesday, August 26, 14:00 - 17:30, Congress Hall
Session chair: Christine Collet (France)

"Object-relational" database systems are emerging as the next major generation of commercial database system technology. Current products from various DBMS vendors (e.g., IBM, Informix, Oracle, UniSQL, and others) provide varying degrees of object-relational features, and all of the major vendors appear to be on course to delivering full object-relational support in their products over the next few years. In addition, the SQL3 standard is pushing in this direction as well. The tutorial will address what the key features are for object-relational database systems, what existing products provide, and where these systems are heading (both in terms of standards and their end goals).

KRISHNA KULKARNI is working as a database architect at Informix Software, Inc. since September 1995. Prior to that, Krishna was with the NonStop SQL Group, Tandem Computers Inc. and with the Database Research Group, Digital Equipment Corporation. Krishna currently serves as a member of the ANSI X3H2 Technical Committee on Database Languages and ISO DBL Rapporteur Group. Krishna has contributed extensively to the design of SQL3.

NELSON MATTOS is a Senior Technical Staff Member in IBM's Data Base Technology Institute. He is a technical leader in SQL and in object-relational extensions to IBM's DB2 products as well as in the Extender products that exploit DB2's object-relational features. He is heavily involved in the SQL3 standard, serving as a key IBM representative on the ANSI and ISO SQL committees.

ANIL K. NORI is one of the lead architects at Oracle Corporation USA. He is working on support for object-relational features in Oracle's DBMS products, and has been with Oracle since 1994. Previously, he worked on Rdb for Digital Equipment Corporation in Nashua; before that, he was with the Computer Corporation of America in Cambridge, MA. He has worked in the area of database research and product development for over 17 years.

Tutorial 4: Visual Data Mining

Daniel A. Keim
Tuesday, August 26, 14:00 - 17:30, Foyer
Session chair: Christos Faloutsos (USA)

For data mining to be effective, it is important to include the human in the data exploration process and combine the flexibility, creativity, and general knowledge of the human with the enormous storage capacity and the computational power of today's computers. Visual data mining aims at integrating the human in the data mining process, applying its perceptual abilities to the large data sets available in today's computer systems. The basic idea of visual data mining is to present the data in some visual form, allowing the human to get insight into the data and draw conclusions. Visual data mining techniques have proven to be of high value in exploratory data analysis and they also have a high potential for mining large databases. Visual data mining is especially powerful for the first step of the data mining process, namely understanding the data and generating hypotheses about the data, but it may also significantly contribute to the actual knowledge discovery by guid- ing the search using visual feedback.

The goal of the tutorial is to provide an overview of data visualization techniques which can be used for exploring large databases. The tutorial presents the state-of-the-art in data visualization, classifying the existing visual data mining techniques into eight groups: Geometric, Icon-based, Graph-based, Pixel-oriented, Hierarchical, 3D, Dynamic, and Hybrid Techniques. Besides describing each of the classes, the tutorial focuses on new developments in data visualization, which are relevant to the area of data mining. In particular, we describe a wide range of recently developed techniques for visualizing large amounts of arbitrary multi-attribute data which does not have any two- or three-dimensional semantics and therefore does not lend itself to an easy display. A detailed comparison shows the strength and weaknesses of the existing techniques and reveals potentials for further improvements. Several examples demonstrate the benefits of visual data mining techniques in real database applications. The tutorial concludes with an overview of existing visual data mining systems, including research prototypes as well as commercial products.

Data visualization deals with the effective portrayal of data with a goal towards insight about the data and is therefore an important possibility for exploring large databases. There are many new developments in the area of data visualization and some of the developed techniques are directly applicable to mining large databases. It is therefore important for researchers in the database community to get an overview of existing visual data mining techniques. Some of the techniques presented in the tutorial are ready for practical application, others might stimulate the development of novel data mining techniques. The tutorial aims at providing an overview of data visualization techniques (as far as relevant to researchers in the database field), bridging the gap between the database and visualization community and inspiring researchers to work in new research directions.

The target audience of the tutorial are researchers and practitioners, who are interested in the state-of-the art of data visualization and its potential application to mining large databases. In particular, the tutorial addresses people from academia who want to integrate database and visualization systems for the purpose of data mining, and people from industry who want to apply visualization technology in exploring large databases.

DANIEL A. KEIM is working in the area of similarity search in databases, indexing of multimedia databases, and visual database mining. In the in the field of visual database mining, he developed several new techniques which use visualization technology for the purpose of exploring large databases, and he was the chief engineer in designing the VisDB system - a visual database analysis and exploration system. He has published extensively on visualization and data mining, and he has given tutorials on related issues at several large conferences.
Dr. Keim received his diploma (equivalent to an MS degree) in Computer Science from the University of Dortmund in 1990 and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Munich in 1994. Currently, he is an assistant professor at the Institute for Computer Science of the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany.

Tutorial 5: Workflow Management - From Business Process Automation to Inter-Organizational Collaboration

Dimitrios Georgakopoulos, Marek Rusinkiewicz
Thursday, August 28, 09:00 - 12:30, Congress Hall
Session chair: Kazimierz Subieta (Poland)

Today's business enterprises must deal with global competition, reduce the cost of doing business, and rapidly develop new services and products. To address these requirements enterprises must constantly reconsider and improve the way they do business and must change their systems, applications, and human organizations to support evolving business processes. Furthermore, the need to capture, analyze, automate, and monitor such processes often goes beyond the boundaries of an individual enterprise. Such virtual enterprises provide virtual services to customers and rely on the human and system resources of various organizations participating in strategic alliences. Workflow technology facilitates these by providing methodologies and software to support (i) business process modeling to capture business processes as workflow specifications, (ii) business process reengineering to improve specified processes, and (iii) workflow automation to generate workflow implementations from workflow specifications. This full-day tutorial consist of three parts entitled overview, evaluation of the state in the art in workflow technology, and directions for enterprise-wide and inter-organizational workflow. In the overview, we discuss business drivers and requirements for workflow technology, review workflow concepts, provide classifications of workflows, and discuss current workflow methodologies. In the evaluation in the state of the art in workflow technology, we present a detailed overview of current capabilities and limitations of workflow products. In this tutorial section we use examples and illustrations from real workflow systems. In the directions for enterprise-wide and inter-organizations workflow, we focus on the most important limitations of existing workflow models and technology and discuss approaches and research directions that address these limitations. In particular, we discuss how new infrastructure technologies such as distributed object management and customized transaction management can address the interoperability and reliability limitations of current workflow technology and extend workflow systems to support enterprise-wide processes. In addition, we discuss the combination of web and workflow technologies for composing and managing business processes involving multiple enterprises that provide virtual services. Finally, we discuss related workflow research activities at GTE Labs, MCC, and other research organizations that currently have active workflow-related projects.

DIMITRIOS GEORGAKOPOULOS is currently the principal investigator of the Workflow Management Infrastructure (WMI) project at GTE Laboratories. The WMI project is developing workflow infrastructure for organizational/business process automation and task-specific system integration. These technologies can provide rapid development of both actual and virtual services, and support corresponding organizations. The project's research and prototype activities include reliable and scalable workflow architectures, languages, services, and tools for managing (i.e., specifying, composing, monitoring, and analyzing) workflows in web and distributed object-based environments. Dimitrios specializes in the areas of workflow and advanced transaction management, web-based infrastructure and services for large distributed systems. His research interests (and previous research experience) include distributed object management systems, multidatabase systems, and data warehouses. Dimitrios received h received the B.S. degree from Aristotelio University of Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1982, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Houston, Texas, in 1986 and 1990, respectively. He has received two IEEE Computer Society Outstanding Paper Awards in 1991 and 1994, respectively. His Transaction Specification and Management Environment (TSME) project at GTE was nominated for the 1994 Computerworld Smithsonian Award in Science.

MAREK RUSINKIEWICZ is vice president for Information Technology Research in the Microelectronics and Computer Technolology Corporation. He came to MCC from the University of Houston, where he was a Professor of Computer Science. Before joining the faculty at Houston in 1981, Rusinkiewicz held academic positions at the University of Glasgow, Warsaw Technological University, the University of Michigan, and Purdue. His research interests include heterogeneous database systems, workflows, transaction processing and agent-based systems. Rusinkiewicz was the Program Chairman of the first IEEE CS International Workshop on Interoperability in Multidatabase Systems in Kyoto, NSF/DARPA workshop on Interoperability and Resolution of Semantic Heterogeneity, and IEEE CS International Conference on Data Engineering.

Tutorial 6: Multimedia Databases

Stavros Christodoulakis
Thursday, August 28, 14:00 - 17:30, Congress Hall
Session chair: Pamela Drew (USA)

Multimedia Applications have grown past the phase of small scale and most implementators realize the need for systematic development and data base support. In addition, new applications like Video on Demand, impose hard requirements on the underline databases. The tutorial will cover the State of the Art in the research and development in the area of multimedia databases as well as technology, standards, commercial systems and applications.

STAVROS CHRISTODOULAKIS has been involved with the area of multimedia information systems since the beginning of the 80's and has developed in his group some of the earliest prototypes of multimedia object management (MINOS project) in the Universities of Toronto and Waterloo. He is currently Professor of the Department of Computer and Electronic Engineering of the Technical University of Crete and Director of the Multimedia Systems Institute of the Technical University of Crete (MU.S.I.C). MUSIC has participated in over 25 European R & D projects the last 6 years in the area of multimedia information systems and applications. MUSIC is currently Prime Contractor in the ESPRIT Long Term Research project HERMES on High Performance Multimedia Information Systems. Professor Christodoulakis is in the Editorial Board of the ACM/Verlag Multimedia Systems, the Distributed and Parallel Databases Journal and the Information Systems Journal. He has also been a Program Chairman for VLDB 92 and in the Editorial Board of ACM TOIS. He participated in many Program Committes in the areas of Databases Multimedia and Information Systems and has given several Tutorials in these conferences. Professor Christodoulakis has a PhD Degree from the Department of Computer Science of the University of Toronto.

Research Session 1: Data Warehousing
Wednesday, August 27, 11:00 - 12:30, Congress Hall
Session chair: Anant Jhigran (USA)

Incremental Organization for Data Recording and Warehousing
H.V. Jagadish, P.P.S. Narayan, S. Seshadri, S. Sudarshan, R. Kanneganti

Multiple-View Self-Maintenance in Data Warehousing Environments.
N. Huyn

Recovering Information from Summary Data
C. Faloutsos, H.V. Jagadish, N.D. Sidiropoulos

Research Session 2: Novel Data Types
Wednesday, August 27, 11:00 - 12:30, Foyer
Session chair: Yannis Ioannidis (USA)

A Language for Manipulating Arrays
A. P. Marathe, K. Salem

Implementing Abstract Objects with Inheritance in Datalog-neg
H. M. Jamil

The Case for Enhanced Abstract Data Types
P. Seshadri, M. Livny, R. Ramakrishnan

Research Session 3: Transactions and Reliability
Wednesday, August 27, 14:00 - 15:30, Congress Hall
Session chair: Krithi Ramamritham (USA)

Integrating Reliable Memory in Databases *BEST PAPER AWARD*
W. T. Ng, P. M. Chen

Logical and Physical Versioning in Main Memory Databases
P. Bohannon, D. Leinbaugh, R. Rastogi, S. Seshadri, A. Silberschatz, S. Sudarshan

Using Versions in Update Transactions: Application to Integrity Checking
F. Llirbat, E. Simon, D. Tombroff

Research Session 4: Multidimensional Databases
Wednesday, August 27, 14:00 - 15:30, Foyer
Session chair: Christian Jensen (Denmark)

A Foundation for Multi-dimensional Databases
M. Gyssens, L. V.S. Lakshmanan

Fast Computation of Sparse Datacubes
K. A. Ross, D. Srivastava

Data Warehouse Configuration
D. Theodoratos, T. Sellis

Research Session 5: Database Design
Wednesday, August 27, 16:00 - 17:30, Congress Hall
Session chair: Asuman Dogac (Turkey)

Algorithms for Materialized View Design in Data Warehousing Environment
J. Yang, K. Karlapalem, Q. Li

An Efficient Cost-Driven Index Selection Tool for Microsoft SQL Server
S. Chaudhuri, V. Narasayya

Materialized Views Selection in a Multidimensional Database
E. Baralis, S. Paraboschi, E. Teniente

Research Session 6: Data Mining
Wednesday, August 27, 16:00 - 17:30, Foyer
Session chair: Martin Kersten (The Netherlands)

Efficient Construction of Regression Trees with Range and Region Splitting
Y. Morimoto, H. Ishii, S. Morishita

Parallel Algorithms for High-dimensional Proximity Joins Applications
J. C. Shafer, R. Agrawal

STING: A Statistical Information Grid Approach to Spatial Data Mining
W. Wang, J. Yang, R. Muntz

Research Session 7: Web Databases
Wednesday, August 27, 16:00 - 17:30, Banquet Hall A
Session chair: Tamer Ozsu (Canada)

Merging Ranks from Heterogeneous Internet Sources
L. Gravano, H. Garcia-Molina

To Weave the Web
P. Atzeni, G. Mecca, P. Merialdo

Using Probabilistic Information in Data Integration
D. Florescu, D. Koller, A. Levy, A. Pfeffer

Research Session 8: Tertiary Storage
Thursday, August 28, 09:00 - 10:30, Foyer
Session chair: Alfons Kemper (Germany)

On-Demand Data Elevation in a Hierarchical Multimedia Storage Servers
P. Triantafillou, T. Papadakis

Principles of Optimally Placing Data in Tertiary Storage Libraries
S. Christodoulakis, P. Triantafillou, F. A. Zioga

Vertical Data Migration in Large Near-Line Document Archives Based on Markov-Chain Predictions
A. Kraiss, G. Weikum

Research Session 9: Heterogeneous Databases
Thursday, August 28, 09:00 - 10:30, Banquet Hall A
Session chair: Fausto Rabitti (Italy)

Describing and Using the Query Capabilities of Heterogeneous Sources
V. Vassalos, Y. Papakonstantinou

Don't Scrap It, Wrap It! A Wrapper Architecture for Legacy Data Sources
M. Tork Roth, P. Schwarz

Optimizing Queries Across Diverse Data Sources
L. M. Haas, D. Kossmann, E. L. Wimmers, J. Yang

Research Session 10: Query Optimization
Thursday, August 28, 11:00 - 12:30, Foyer
Session chair: Laura Haas (USA)

Optimizing Queries with Universal Quantification in Object-Oriented and Object-Relational Databases
J. Claussen, A. Kemper, G. Moerkotte, K. Peithner

Parallel Query Scheduling and Optimization with Time- and Space-Shared Resources
M. N. Garofalakis, Y. E. Ioannidis

The Complexity of Transformation-Based Join Enumeration
A. Pellenkoft, C. A. Galindo Legaria, M. Kersten

Research Session 11: Distributed Databases
Thursday, August 28, 11:00 - 12:30, Banquet Hall A
Session chair: Gunter von Bultzingslowen (Switzerland)

1-Safe Algorithms for Symmetric Site Configurations
R. Humborstad, M. Sabaratnam, S. O. Hvasshovd, O. Torbjornsen

Adaptive Data Broadcast in Hybrid Networks
K. Stathatos, N. Roussopoulos, J. S. Baras

Finding Data in the Neighborhood
A. Eickler, A. Kemper, D. Kossmann

Research Session 12: Database Algorithms
Thursday, August 28, 14:00 - 15:30, Foyer
Session chair: Ken Salem (Canada)

A One-Pass Algorithm for Accurately Estimating Quantiles for Disk-Resident Data
K. Alsabti, S. Ranka, V. Singh

Concurrent Garbage Collection in O2
M. Skubiszewski, P. Valduriez

Garbage Collection in Object-Oriented Databases Using Transactional Cyclic Reference Counting
S. Ashwin, P. Roy, S. Seshadri, A. Silberschatz, S. Sudarshan

Research Session 13: Sorts and Joins
Thursday, August 28, 16:00 - 17:30, Foyer
Session chair: Betty Salzberg (USA)

Dynamic Memory Adjustment for External Mergesort
W. Zhang,, P-A. Larson

Evaluation of Main Memory Join Algorithms for Joins with Subset Comparison Join Predicates
S. Helmer, G. Moerkotte

Spatial Joins Using R-trees: Breadth-First Traversal with Global Optimizations
Y-W. Huang, N. Jing, E. A. Rundensteiner

Research Session 14: Spatial Access Methods
Friday, August 29, 08:30 - 10:00, Congress Hall
Session chair: Nick Roussopoulos (USA)

A Generic Approach to Bulk Loading Multidimensional Index Structures
J. van den Bercken, B. Seeger, P. Widmayer

A Region Splitting Strategy for Physical Database Design of Multidimensional File Organizations
J-H. Lee, Y-K. Lee, K-Y. Whang, I-Y. Song

M-tree: An Efficient Access Method for Similarity Search in Metric Spaces
P. Ciaccia, M. Patella, P. Zezula

Research Session 15: Querying and Browsing
Friday, August 29, 08:30 - 10:00, Foyer
Session chair: Inderpal Mumick (USA)

DataGuides: Enabling Query Formulation and Optimization in Semistructured Databases
R. Goldman, J. Widom

Using Taxonomy, Discriminants, and Signatures for Navigating in Text Databases
S. Chakrabarti, B. Dom, R. Agrawal, P. Raghavan

Towards an ODMG-Compliant Visual Object Query Language
M. Chavda, P. Wood

Research Session 16: Query Processing
Friday, August 29, 11:30 - 13:00, Congress Hall
Session chair: Theo Harder (Germany)

Fast Incremental Maintenance of Approximate Histograms
P. B. Gibbons, Y. Matias, V. Poosala

Groupwise Processing of Relational Queries
D. Chatziantoniou, K. A. Ross

Selectivity Estimation Without the Attribute Value Independence Assumption
V. Poosala, Y. E. Ioannidis

Research Session 17: Multimedia Databases
Friday, August 29, 11:30 - 13:00, Foyer
Session chair: Shahram Ghandeharizadeh (USA)

Effective Memory Use in a Media Server
E. Chang, H. Garcia-Molina

Efficient User-Adaptable Similarity Search in Large Multimedia Databases
T. Seidl, H-P. Kriegel

Resource Scheduling in Enhanced Pay-Per-View Continuous Media Databases
M. N. Garofalakis, B. Ozden, A. Silberschatz

Industrial Session 1: System Experiences
Wednesday, August 27, 11:00 - 12:30, Banquet Hall A
Session chair: Tekin Ozsoyoglou (USA)

Integrating SQL databases with Content-specific Search Engines
S. Dessloch, N.M. Mattos

Facilitating Multimedia Database Exploration through Visual Interfaces and Perpetual Query Reformulations
W-S. Li, K. Selcuk Candan, K. Hirata, Y. Hara

Geo/Environmental and Medical Data Management in the RasDaMan System
P. Baumann, P. Furtado, R. Ritsch, N. Widmann

Industrial Session 2: Application Challenges
Wednesday, August 27, 14:00 - 15:30, Banquet Hall A
Session chair: TBA

GTE SuperPages: Using IR Techniques for Searching Complex Objects
S. Whitehead, H. Sinha, M. Murphy

Data Manager for Evolvable Real-time Command and Control Systems
E. Hughes, R. Ginis, B. Thuraisingham, P. Krupp, J. Maurer

Mining Insurance Data at Swiss Life
J-U. Kietz, U. Reimer, M. Staudt

Industrial Session 3: Research Visions
Thursday, August 28, 14:00 - 15:30, Baquet Hall A
Session chair: Kyu-Young Whang (Korea)

The Network as a Global Database: Challenges of Interoperability, Proactivity, Interactiveness, Legacy
P. Lockemann, U. Koelsch, A. Kolsch, R. Kramer, R. Nikolai, M. Wallrath, H-D Walter

Distributed Processing over Stand-alone Systems and Applications
G. Alonso, C. Hagen, H-J. Schek, M. Tresch

Critical Database Technologies for High Energy Physics
D.M. Malon, E.N. May

Industrial Session 4: Industry Solutions
Friday, August 29, 08:30 - 10:00, Banquet Hall A
Session chair: Gustavo Alonso (Switzerland)

Caprera: An Activity Framework for Transaction Processing on Wide-Area Networks
S. Kumar, E-K. Kwang, D. Agrawal

The Oracle Universal Server Buffer Manager
W. Bridge, A. Joshi, M. Keihl, T. Lahiri, J. Loaiza, N. Macnaughton

Efficient Testing of High Performance Transaction Processing Systems
D. Wildfogel, R. Yerneni

Panel 1: Very Large OLAP and Statistical Databases - Progress and Problems
Thursday, August 28, 16:00 - 17:30, Banquet Hall A
Moderator: Frank Olken, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (USA)

Wolfgang Lehner, Univ. of Erlangen and GFK (Germany)
Arie Shoshani, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (USA)
Donovan Schneider, Red Brick Systems (USA)

Major issues to be addressed include data models for OLAP and statistical databases (multi-dimensional, extended relational, nested relational model of statistical tables, etc), operations, and implementation issues. The panelists, will be asked for their assessments of the relative merits of the various proposals, whether we need further work on the issues, and prospects for new, advanced technology.

The panelists include :

Stavros Christodoulakis, Tech. Univ. of Crete and MUSIC (Greece)
Jim Devine, University of Glasgow (United Kingdom)
Michael Ley, University of Trier (Germany)
Tamer Ozsu, University of Alberta (Canada)

The availability of information traditionally found in Libraries and Museums will be profoundly influenced by the Global Information Infrastructure as it is currently instantiated by the World Wide Web. With relative ease such information can be digitized as text, facsimile, pictures, audio, video, etc. and distributed either by push or pull technology to service providers (electronic libraries, museums), value adders (authors, editors) or consumers (we all).

Currently a multitude of storage or depositories as archival approaches to keeping such information consistent, authenticated, protected, and persistent exist. However, only a few of such mechanisms are built on database technology. Is therefore the age of databases in digital libraries and digital museums over before it has even begun? Major issues to be addressed by the panelists include the role of authors, publishers, libraries, and/or museums in the Global Information Society, what services will be offered, what services will be included in databases-middleware-application software, what is the required functionality of databases, and what are the existing, coming or needed products.

Vendors of commercial database management system face many challenges in incorporating into their products innovative technologies developed in academia. Pragmatic considerations and operational requirements can limit the viability of applying promising research. Technology leadership in commercial products is often the result of taking unconventional approaches rather than following "conventional wisdom", as illustrated with several examples of technologies in Oracle8 and its predecessors. The challenge shared by researchers and practitioners alike: "making what we do matter."

KENNETH JACOBS is vice president of Product Strategy for Oracle's Server Technologies Division. He is responsible for a number of technology planning activities for the Oracle database product family, including parallel processing, object technology and high performance systems. He has most recently acted as the senior manager responsible for coordinating all company activities surrounding the release of Oracle's next generation database product, Oracle8. Mr. Jacobs is a frequent speaker at industry symposiums and conferences. Previous to his current role, Mr. Jacobs was vice president of Product Management for the Server Technologies Division, where he managed a team responsible for product management and marketing for the Oracle7 database server and related technologies. Mr. Jacobs joined Oracle in July 1981 and has held a variety of positions with technical, managerial and marketing responsibilities in field and corporate roles. Mr. Jacobs has contributed to several industry-wide activities including the development of the SQL database language. For many years, he served as Oracle's representative on the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) SQL Committee, the technical committee on databases (X3H2). He also initiated and led efforts to enhance the security features of the Oracle database server, working with the National Computer Security Center and other key government agencies. Mr. Jacobs has also represented Oracle at the Transaction Processing Performance Council. Prior to joining Oracle, Mr. Jacobs was with Inslaw Inc., where he managed a team providing computing support to social science survey data research. Prior to this, he worked as a programmer and systems analyst for several companies including: ADP Network Services, The Urban Institute, Oberlin College and The Brookings Institution. Mr. Jacobs received a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College and performed graduate work in computer science at George Washington University.

An object-oriented repository has many of the same features as an object-oriented database, but extends the latter with built-in information models and often more functionality. New standards, trends in document management, and new products are making repostories a more important segment of the database market. This talk will describe these developments and then focus on details of one new product -- the Microsoft Repository shipping with Visual Basic 5.0. -- emphasizing how it integrates with the COM/ActiveX object model and the benefits that derive from this integration.

PHILIP A. BERSTEIN is Repository Architect at Microsoft Corporation. He was formerly an architect at Digital Equipment Corp., a professor at Harvard University, VP Software at Sequoia Systems, and Professor at Wang Institute of Graduate Studies. Dr. Bernstein has published widely on database systems, was codesigner of several distributed database systems and of the STDL language standard for transaction processing. His latest book is "Principles of Transaction Processing" (Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 1996).

10 YEAR AWARD TALK: Multidimensional Access Methods: Trees Have Grown Everywhere
Friday, August 29, 10:15 - 11:15, Congress Hall
Session chair: Matthias Jarke (Germany)
Speaker: Timos Sellis, National Technical University of Athens

This year's winner of the 10-year Award is: "The R+-Tree: A Dynamic Index for Multidimensional Objects", by T. Sellis, N. Roussopoulos and C. Faloutsos.

Multi-dimensional search trees and Spatial Access Methods, in general, were designed to handle spatial objects, like points, line segments, polygons, polyhedra etc. The applications are numerous, including traditional database multi-attribute indexing, Geographic Information Systems and spatial database systems, and indexing multimedia databases by content. This talk will first summarize variations of multi-dimensional search trees and algorithms that have been devised to answer point/range queries. It will also discuss numerous proposals for using such structures in other than the traditional spatial database applications they were initially proposed for, such as active database systems, multimedia databases, OLAP and DataCube processing, and indexing time sequences. Finally, it will touch on issues of further interest, including benchmarking and performance evaluation of access methods, and query optimization strategies.

Conference Welcome Reception
Tuesday, August 26, 20:00 - 23:00, The Pergola

Conference Banquet
Thursday, August 28, 20:00 - 23:00, The Pergola

This page is maintained at the Nationa Technical University of Athens by the Knowledge and Database Systems Laboratory (Timos Sellis, Organization Committee Chair of VLDB'97). Last update: 26-July-1997

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