A Database Striptease or How to Manage Your Personal Databasese

Panel Chair: Martin Kersten CWI, Netherlands

Martin Kersten

Goal of the panel

To survive in our digital society a person can rely on laptops, PDAs, telephones, etc. As long as its data sources are independent, devices are never replaced, nor new devices enter our realm of existence, we will survive easily. However, life runs a different course and we have to spent a lot of time and effort to keep the data sources"up-to-date" and consistent. Taken in isolation, each application appears as a trivial task and its developers will not be inclined to consider a DBMS the right approach to manage a list of a few tens of records. The investment is too high and the macro benefits (interoperability and evolution) are unclear. At the same time, to secure product lines and enable interoperability between products, the developers are forced to rethink transaction management, resource optimization, and query processing.

The panelists are challenged to comment on the opportunities, challenges, pitfalls, and laboratory progress on database technology for such personal databases.

About the panel organizer

Martin Kersten has been at CWI in 1985 where he was co-designer of the PRISMA database machine, a RDBMS for a 100-node multiprocessor. From 1989-1993 he led a national project on the exploitation of the Amoeba distributed system for advanced database management and a national project on database design formalizations. Since 1992 he is head of the department of Information Systems. At the same time he started the ESPRIT-III Pythagoras project aimed at performance quality assessment of advanced database systems. He remained associate professor at the Vrije Universiteit teaching advanced courses on database technology until mid 1994. Since 1992 he is also associate professor at the University of Amsterdam and became a full professor in multimedia databases as of 1994. Currently, he is head of department covering data mining and data warehousing, multimedia information systems, visualization, quantum computing and advanced systems research. He is a co-founder of Data Distilleries.

The Data-Centric Revolution in Networking

Panel Chair: Sophie Cluet, INRIA, France

Sophie Cluet

Goal of the panel

Our goal in this panel is to address the following questions: Who really needs an XML database and for what purposes? Are there such things as XML applications? Is there a killer application that must have an XML database? Does the lack of common data model and standard for query language hold us back? If so, who should develop it?

Ten years ago, object-oriented database systems tried to conquer the database market and failed. Is the past going to be replayed with native XML databases? § Five years from now, which percentage of XML data will be stored in extensions of relational database systems, which percentage in variants of information retrieval systems, and which percentage in brave new native XML databases?

About the panel organizer

Sophie Cluet holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Paris-Sud. She was a researcher at INRIA (French National Institute in Computer Science and Control) where she managed the Verso database group for some years. She was also a scientific advisor for O2Technology, a French company that developed the O2 object-oriented database management system. In 2000, she co-funded Xyleme, a company that provides solutions for the handling of large volume of XML data. She worked there for two years as Chief Technology Officer. Sophie Cluet is now head of INRIA Rocquencourt.

Illuminating the Dark Side of Web Services

Panel Chair: Michael Brodie, Verizon, USA

Michael Brodie,

Goal of the panel

Web Services are widely heralded as a step to the next generation of computing and a basis for resolving integration, one of the largest IT challenges. With essentially all vendors supporting Web Services and considerable focus on Web Services, it may appear as if Web Services are maturing consistent with analyst projections for the 2003 to 2005 period. The reality is quite different. Web Services are in their infancy. Designing, developing, and deploying a Service-Oriented computing model over the Internet is a massive undertaking. Having understood the potential of Web Services, like seeing the Moon on a clear night, it is now time to illuminate the dark side of Web Services. Panelists from leading Web Services vendors' infrastructure vendors and research organizations will review the vision, predicted schedule, and actual status of the development and usage of Web Services. They will identify significant technical challenges to which the database community should contribute.

About the panel organizer

Dr. Michael L. Brodie, Chief Scientist, Verizon Information Technology, works on large-scale strategic Information Technology (IT) challenges for Verizon Communications Corporation's senior executives. His primary interest is in the optimal use of IT, with an emphasis on emerging and advanced technologies and practices, to enable organizational and business objectives, including organizational change. His long-term industrial research focus is on advanced computational models and architectures and the large-scale information systems that they support. He is concerned with the Big Picture, business and technical contexts, core technologies, and "integration" within in a large scale, operational telecommunications environment.