The database field, like most areas of
Computer Science, is going through a period of rapid
change driven by the ascendancy of the Internet and
the emergence of pervasive computing and communications
infrastructure. The pace of innovation has greatly accelerated
over the past few years and all indications are that
this acceleration will continue. In such a dynamic environment
it becomes necessary to continually re-evaluate the
boundaries of a discipline in order to ensure that the
work being done in that area remains relevant. As specialists
in data management, we are particularly susceptible
to being overwhelmed by the tsunami of Internet-related
activity in both the commercial and academic spheres.
Recently, the VLDB announced a new effort
aimed at "broadening" the field of data and database
management by encouraging exploratory work in areas
that migh t be considered outside of the traditional
bounds of the SIGMOD/VLDB community. I wholeheartedly
support this effort and along with the SIGMOD
Record Editorial Board have also been trying
to encourage this innovation and re-evaluation through
the choice of material to present in our quarterly newsletter.
This issue of the Record is a particularly
good example of our efforts in these directions.
First, the issue contains four articles
that present a uniquely database-oriented perspective
on the Internet. Labrinidis and Roussopoulos describe
their experiences with alternative approaches for presenting
database content through a web server. Recent advances
in XML are described in papers by Liefke and Suciu and
Bonifati and Ceri. Finally, the paper by Paepcke, Garcia-Molina,
Rodriguez-Mula, and Cho lays out the fundamentals of
value-based search and browsing, which represent important
alternative paradigms to traditional database query
facilities.
Also of particular interest in this issue
is the description of the new ACM-SIGMOD Digital Review
edited by H.V. Jagadish, which exploits the connectivity
and immediacy of the the Web to increase the flow of
ideas an opinions in the database research community.
Of course, it is important during such
a period of change that we do not lose sight of our
past accomplishments and lessons learned. For this reason,
we continue to present the ``Influential Papers'' section,
where current innovator s describe how previous classic
and perhaps not-so classic work in the field has helped
shape their research directions.
As always, we thank the authors for taking
the time to prepare these excellent articles and encourage
our readers to suggest further ways that we can improve
the relevance and timeliness of the SIGMOD Record.
| Michael Franklin |
| January, 2000 |
|
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