Title: Panel: Future Directions of Database Research - The VLDB Broadening Strategy, Part 2
Abstract: Over its 40-year history, database research has made major contributions to developing core database management systems technology, which now lies at the heart of every conventional application. Whereas the database field should contribute to the full scope of data management—its applicability, its challenges, and its future directions—this has not happened. The database field now faces two challenges. First, fundamental data management assumptions do not apply to the data requirements of the next generation of applications. Longstanding data application challenges, such as semantic interoperability, inhibit data-centric solutions, thus leading to solutions in other domains. New computing environments, such as the WWW, require a rethinking of core database technology in all areas, e.g., architecture and query/search techniques. Second, new application domains typically do not appeal to the database field to address new data management problems. Over the past decade, other new or established areas have addressed data-intensive problems (e.g., the role of data in the Web, e-commerce, digital libraries, and knowledge management/discovery). As the Internet, gizmos, e-applications, ubiquitous computing, and other trends revolutionize computing (which is accompanied by an explosive growth of data and transaction volumes), database technology is relegated to its conventional forms. The database field is being narrowed to core database technologies used by conventional applications. As we embrace the largest revolution in computing history, the database community should face the full scope of data management challenges in the next generation of computing, that is, all forms of data in all applications. Data, which is one of the three pillars of computing, is critical to current and future computing. Data volumes and database transactions are growing to astronomical levels. Yet data and its management are not first-class citizens with process/logic, communications, or presentation. New areas with critical data components do not turn to the database community for ideas, advice, or technology. In turn, the database community does not adequately reach out to these new domains. The database community has much more to offer the current and next generation of computing than is currently offered or requested. This must change. The database community must broaden its scope to all aspects of data in all contexts and to take its proper role in developing the next generation of computing.
Publication Year: 2000
Publication Date: 2000-09-10
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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