Workshop on Deductive and Interoperable Databases

by Felix Saltor

The sixth Workshop of the ERCIM Database Research Group (EDRG) took place in Barcelona on 1-2 November 1994, and was hosted by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) on behalf of AEDIMA. It was attended by 31 participants from eight countries.

Previous EDRG workshops had dealt with "Theory and languages" (CWI,1991), "Solutions to problems of scientific DBs" (RAL, 1992), "Updates and constraints handling in advanced DB systems" (CNR-IEI, 1992), "Repositories, methods and tools for systems engineering" (FORTH, 1993), and "Parallelism and non-determinism for data intensive applications" (INRIA-Rocquencourt,1993). This sixth workshop discussed two of the most active areas of research in the database field: Deductive and Interoperable Databases. Two invited papers, and 13 contributed papers were presented.

The first day was devoted to Interoperable databases. Dr. Wolfgang Klas, GMD-IPSI (D), presented an invited paper on the state of the art in this area, with references to the ESPRIT project IRO-DB. Papers were then presented by F. Saltor, UPC (E), on architectures for federated DBs, by J. Loret, Zaragoza University (E), on a conceptual approach to interoperability, by C. Thieme, CWI (NL), on schema integration based on structure and behaviour, by V. Smahi, Versailles University - St.Quentin (F), on an intermediate functional language, by C. Morpain, Montpellier II University (F), on global concurrency control and the 2 The second day dealt with Deductive databases. Prof. Jorge Bocca, Birmingham University (GB), first presented his approach, based on logic programming, to decision support systems with complex and spatio-temporal data. Papers were then presented by E. Mayol, UPC (E), on an integrated treatment of updates and rule enforcement, by P. Asirelli, IEI-CNR (I), on a selective refutation procedure for integrity constraints checking, by M. A. Vila, Granada University (E), on fuzzy relational and deductive DBs, and by J. F. Aldana, Málaga University (E), on dataflow Datalog. The final paper, by H. Decker, at Siemens (D) when the paper was written and now on leave at UPC (E), on distributed and disjunctive DBs, provided a nice end to the workshop by tying together the two areas, interoperable and deductive databases.

The proceedigns of the workshop will be published as ERCIM workshop report.

Two EDRG meetings are planned for 1995. These will not only be the continuation of the EDRG workshops but will start the series of working meetings for the ERCIM Advanced Database Technology Network that has been approved for financial support by the Commission of the EU within the Human Capital Mobility Programme. For further information, please contact Keith Jefferey - RAL, EDRG Leader (E-mail: kgjinf.rl.ac.uk) or Patrizia Asirelli, IEI-CNR, EDRG Deputy Leader, E-mail: asirelliiei.pi.cnr.it

Please Contact:
Felix Saltor - AEDIMA
Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Barcelona
Tel: +34 3 401 70 23
E-mail: saltorlsi.upc.es