Chair's Message

During the past couple of months, I have worked to arrive at a plan of
actions to take to fulfill my pledge to bring the database research
segment and non-research segment of our community close together. 
There is a lot going on in the non-research segment which includes
database engine vendors, database tools vendors, users of these products,
trade shows, trade press, and government initiatives.
Through discussions with the SIGMOD Industry Committee and SIGMOD Advisory
Committee, I have arrived at the following multipronged approach to bring
this about. 
 
1. The SIGMOD Conference will continue to have non-research sessions,
   in which invited speakers will give talks without papers.
   The talks should be organized around a few broad themes
  (e.g., trigger support in RDBMS, database standards landscape,
   4GLs, etc.). Under each them, a few speakers will be invited.

2. The SIGMOD Conference will accept more "systems and experiences" papers
   (without lowering the number of research papers accepted).
   Systems and experiences papers are those that report work done in DBMS
   engine or DB tools vendors, that that set forth concrete directions for
   research and development, that shed light on experiences and concerns
   of major users.

   The SIGMOD Conference may even invite a few papers that belong to
   this category, and, if necessary, have them shepharded by some members
   of the Program Committee.

3. SIGMOD, through the SIGMOD Conference and SIGMOD RECORD, will
   establish a two-way relationship between the database research community
   and non-research community.

   The SIGMOD RECORD and SIGMOD Conference will allocate special sections
   and sessions, respectively, on important developments in database-related
   standards activities, important new products and trends found in trade
   shows, worthy articles found in trade press.

   I will try to implement ways to have worthy research results 
   (e.g., a few of the papers accepted to the SIGMOD Conference)
   communicated to the non-research community (e.g., presented
   in a special section of the conference portion of a major trade show,
   or a summary of the paper published in a trade press).

I have already started working with Rick Snodgrass, PC Chair for SIGMOD-94,
on the first two items above, and an aspect of the third item.

The third item will require substantial work to flesh out and to recruit 
a handful of dedicated volunteers from both segments of our community.
This will consume perhaps all of my "professional duties" time for
the next few months.



Sincerely,

Won Kim
UniSQL, Inc.
Austin, Texas