VLDB 2002 28th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases   Kowloon Shangri-La Hotel August 20-23, 2002 Hong Kong, China

KEYNOTE PROGRAM

| Tuesday, August 20: Keynote 1 (Adam Bosworth) | Wednesday, August 21: Keynote 2 (Chris J. Date) |

KEYNOTE 1: TUESDAY, 20 AUGUST 2002, 09:15-10:30

Data Routing Rather than Databases: The Meaning of the Next Wave of the Web Revolution to Data Management (PDF Presentation Slides - 88K)   Adam Bosworth BEA Systems, Inc., U.S.A.   ABSTRACT What is going to be as important in the next 20 years as relational databases were in the prior 20 years is the management of self-describing extensible messages. The net is undergoing a profound change as it moves from an entirely pull-oriented model into a push model. This latter model is far more biological in nature with an increasing amount of information flowing asynchronously through the system to form an InformationBus. The key challenges for the next 20 years will be storing, routing, querying, filtering, managing, and interacting with this bus in a manner that doesn't lead to total systems degradation. Predictive intelligent filtering and rules engines will become more important than querying. Driving factors for this revolution will be the need for push for portable devices due to their poor latency and intermittent communication, an increasing demand for timely information on fully connected devices, a huge rise in application to application integration through asynchronous messaging based on web services and a concomitant requirement for an entirely new type of message broker, and an increasing desire for intelligent agents to cope with information overload as all information becomes available all the time. The key enabling technology will be XML messages and the various technologies that will develop for handling XML ranging from transformation to compression to indexing to storage to programming languages. ABOUT THE SPEAKER As VP of Engineering for BEA's Framework Division, Adam drives the strategic and technical directions for BEA's WebLogic Workshop, WebLogic Integration, and WebLogic Portal products. Before joining BEA, Adam co-founded Crossgain, a software development firm acquired by BEA in 2001. Adam is widely recognized as a pioneer and key figure in the evolution of XML. Prior to Crossgain, Adam was a senior manager at Microsoft where he drove the company's entire XML program from 1997 through 1999. He was then named general manager of Microsoft's WebData organization, a team focused on refining the company's long-term XML strategy. While at Microsoft, he was also responsible for designing and delivering the Microsoft Access PC Database product, and he managed the development of the HTML engine used in Internet Explorer 4 and Internet Explorer 5.

KEYNOTE 2: WEDNESDAY, 21 AUGUST 2002, 09:00-10:30

Foundation Matters (PDF Presentation Slides -116K) Chris J. Date Independent Consultant, U.S.A.   ABSTRACT This talk is meant as a wake-up call … The foundation of the database field is, of course, the relational model. Sad to say, however, there are some in the database community--certainly in industry, and to some extent in academia also--who do not seem to be as familiar with that model as they ought to be; there are others who seem to think it is not very interesting or relevant to the day-to-day business of earning a living; and there are still others who seem to think all of the foundation-level problems have been solved. Indeed, there seems to be a widespread feeling that "the world has moved on," so to speak, and the relational model as such is somehow passé. In my opinion, nothing could be further from the truth! In this talk, I want to sketch the results of some of my own investigations into database foundations over the past twenty years or so; my aim is to convey some of the excitement and abiding interest that is still to be found in those investigations, with a view--I hope--to inspiring others in the field to become involved in such activities. Almost all of the ideas I will be covering either are part of, or else build on top of, The Third Manifesto, which is a detailed proposal for the future direction of data and DBMSs. Like Codd's original papers on the relational model, it can be seen as an abstract blueprint for the design of a DBMS and the language interface to such a DBMS. Among many other things: It shows that the relational model--and I do mean the relational model, not SQL--is a necessary and sufficient foundation on which to build "object/relational" DBMSs (sometimes called universal servers). It also points out certain blunders that can unfortunately be observed in some of today's products (not to mention the SQL:1999 standard). And it explores in depth the idea that a relational database, along with the relational operators, is really a logical system and shows how that idea leads to a solution to the view updating problem, among other things. ABOUT THE SPEAKER C.J. Date is an independent author, lecturer, researcher and consultant, specializing in relational database technology. He was one of the first people anywhere to recognize the significance of Codd's pioneering work on the relational model, and has done more than anyone else to make that work accessible to others. Before leaving IBM in 1983, he was involved in technical planning and design for the IBM products SQL/DS and DB2. His book An Introduction to Database Systems (7th edition, 2000) is the standard text on the subject; it has sold over 650,000 copies and is used by several hundred colleges and universities worldwide. He is also author or coauthor of some 30 other books on database management, including (with Hugh Darwen) A Guide to the SQL Standard (4th edition, 1997) and Foundation for Future Database Systems: The Third Manifesto (2nd edition, 2000). He holds an MA Degree in Mathematics from Cambridge University, England (1966) and the honorary degree of Doctor of Technology from De Montfort University, England (1994).