(DBWORLD) KRDB'98

Vinay Chaudhri (chaudhri@ai.sri.com)
Thu, 11 Dec 1997 07:20:46 -0800

KRDB'98 - Call for Papers & Participation

5th International Workshop on
KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION MEETS DATABASES (KRDB'98):
Innovative Application Programming and Query Interfaces

Co-sponsored by Air Force Research Laboratory (Rome Laboratory), USA

In counjunction with ACM SIGMOD/PODS'98

Both databases and knowledge bases are used to represent the relevant
parts of an application domain, and to allow convenient access to the
stored information. Research in knowledge representation (KR)
originally concentrated on expressive formalisms with sophisticated
reasoning services, usually under the assumption that the size of the
knowledge base (KB) was relatively small. In contrast, database (DB)
research was concerned with efficiently storing, retrieving and sharing large
amounts of data, but the languages for describing schema information
were rather simple, and reasoning about the schema played only a minor
role.

This distinction between the requirements and problems in KR and DB is
vanishing rapidly. On the one hand, a modern KR system must be able to
handle large data sets if it is to be employed in realistic
applications. This means that techniques developed in the DB area can
and should be employed. On the other hand, the information stored in
DBs is becoming more complex, and thus requires more intelligent
retrieval and reasoning techniques.

The series of annual KRDB workshops was started in 1994 with the
intention to bring together researchers and developers from different
areas of KR and DB, where an interaction between the two fields has a
potential of high payoff.

In 1998, we intend to focus the discussions at KRDB on application
programming and query interfaces, that is, innovative ways to query and
update knowledge and database systems. The following is an
(incomplete) list of topics that are of interest in this context:

o What should be the application programming interface for a database
containing nonrelational data (e.g., semistructured data or assertions)?

o What should be the features of an application programming interface
that is intended to work across multiple KR or DB systems?

o How portable are the applications written using the current APIs?

o How easy is it in practice to take advantage of extensibility in
current DB and KR systems?

o How can a database query processor be easily augmented with
a standalone reasoner or a legacy search engine?

o How can ontologies be used to improve the query evaluation over
heterogeneous information sources?

o How can criteria for the performance evaluation of query processors
be extended beyond execution speed to include precision, recall,
and the ability to explain the answers?

o How can description logics be used for representing, querying and
verifying meta data?

o What kinds of control are useful to better direct the query
evaluation process?

o Can the semantics of KR languages adequately describe how query
languages deal with abstract data types such as lists and bags?

KRDB is a forum for exchanging ideas between DB and KR
researchers. Equally important is the KRDB tradition of stimulating
the discussion between researchers and practitioners. The number of
participants in the workshop will be restricted. Potential
participants are encouraged to submit a position paper (see SUBMISSION
OF PAPERS below) that describes their current research and possibly
previous accomplishments related to the workshop topic. Authors of
papers accepted for the proceedings will have the opportunity to
present their opinions by talks. Other contributions will stimulate
the open discussion planned in the workshop schedule.

Registration information will be announced closer to the date of
the workshop.

SUBMISSION OF PAPERS

Authors are invited to submit extended abstracts not exceeding 4 pages
(1500 words). An extended abstract can be a position paper or a
summary of a full paper. A position paper may be a viewpoint on a
controversial topic or a summary of lessons learned from recent
research or practical experience. An abstract of a full paper may be
a description of a new mechanism or architecture, a product or
prototype, an application, or results of work in progress. The
extended abstracts will be reviewed with focus on relevance and
potential input to discussions.

Submissions should be sent by February 28, 1998 to

Vinay K. Chaudhri
SRI International
Menlo Park, CA 94025 USA
Email: krdb98@ai.sri.com
Phone: (650)859-3368

Submissions via Email (Standard Postscript, compressed and uuencoded)
are strongly recommended.

Accepted papers will be printed in the Workshop proceedings and can be
expanded up to 4000 words. Other selected contributions will be
included as 1-page abstracts for the discussion slot. The proceedings
will be electronically published in the CEUR-Workshop proceeding
series at http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/
A hard copy publication of the proceedings is also planned.

IMPORTANT DATES

Deadline for submissions : February 28, 1998
Notification of acceptance: April 1, 1998
Final papers due : May 1, 1998

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Vinay K. Chaudhri, SRI International, USA
Alex Borgida, Rutgers University, USA
Martin Staudt, Swiss Life, Switzerland

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Craig Anken, Air Force Research Laboratory, USA
Franz Baader, Aachen University of Technology, Germany
Umesh Dayal, Hewlett Packard Laboratories, USA
Adam Farquhar, Stanford University, USA
Manfred Jeusfeld, KUB Tilburg, The Netherlands
Alon Levy, University of Washington at Seattle, USA
Alberto Mendelzon, University of Toronto, Canada
Werner Nutt, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Timos Sellis, National Technical University of Athens, Greece

WORKSHOP DATE AND LOCATION

The workshop will take place in Seattle at the same location as
SIGMOD/PODS'98. For more information about SIMOD/PODS, see
http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/sigmod98/.

The tentative date for the workshop is May 31, 1998. As soon as the
date is confirmed, it will be posted on the KRDB'98 home page:
http://www.ai.sri.com/krdb98/.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The dbworld list reaches many people, and should only be used for
messages of general interest to the database community.
To subscribe or unsubscribe yourself (or optionally (address)) from
dbworld, send a msg to majordomo@cs.wisc.edu with one of these lines:
subscribe dbworld (address)
unsubscribe dbworld (address)
To find out more options send a msg with the line:
help
--------------------------------------------------------------------------