This document summarizes the results of the National Science Foundation sponsored workshop on Industrial/Academic Cooperation in Database Systems, held on October 29-30, 1998 in Los Gatos, California.

Many academic database researchers in computer science want their research to be more relevant to the computer industry. But how do they select the right topics ¾ ones that are commercially important and are likely to yield the algorithmic or mathematical content required for publication in top journals and conferences? Industrial researchers could help by describing projects and problems with significant intellectual, possibly mathematical or scientific, content. But they have little incentive to do so. Their main goal is to solve problems, not brainstorm research agendas.

The objective of the workshop was to address this problem. In particular:

• To enable technical people in DBMS companies to share with academics some of the interesting intellectual problems which have arisen while implementing large-scale DBMSs,
• To find problems of mutual interest for possible collaboration,
• To discuss ways that DBMS companies can enable academics to make their research reflect advances in current practice, and
• To discuss mechanisms for longer term exchanges of information.

• Workshop Report, summarizing the presentations and discussion (17 pp.)
• Presentation Slides

• Paula Hawthorn, Independent Consultant


• James Hamilton, SQL Server Parallel Cluster Architect, Microsoft


• Michael Ubell, Executive Architect, Informix Software.


• Anil K. Nori, Architect, Oracle Corporation.


• Eric Brewer, Inktomi Corporation.


• Marie-Anne Neimat, TimesTenVP Engineering, TimesTen Performance Software.


• Philip A. Bernstein, Senior Researcher and Repository Architect, Microsoft Corp.


• Paul A. Durdik, Patent Attorney


• John Cheniavsky, Director, Division of Experimental and Integrative Activities, NSF.


• Daniel Barbara, George Mason University Information and Software Engineering Department.


• Panos K. Chrysanthis , Computer Science Department, University of Pittsburgh.


• Victor Vianu.


• Richard Snodgrass.

The organizing committee for the workshop consisted of Betty Salzberg – chairperson (Northeastern Univ.), Mike Carey (IBM Almaden), Joseph Hellerstein (U.C. Berkeley), and Ashish Gupta (Amazon.com). Also, Maria Zemankova of the NSF provided much encouragement and advice to the organizing committee.