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 |
|
Notice to Contributing Authors to SIG Newsletters:
By submitting your article for distribution in this Special Interest
Group publication, you hereby grant to ACM the following
non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide rights:
- to publish in print on condition of acceptance by the editor
- to digitize and post your article in the electronic version of this
publication
- to include the article in the ACM Digital Library
- to allow users to copy and distribute the article for noncommercial,
educational or research purposes
However, as a contributing author, you retain copyright to your
article and ACM will make every effort to refer requests for
commercial use directly to you. Therefore, ACM is asking all
newsletter authors to include their contact information in their
submissions.
