KRDB 1998
Call for Papers & Participation

(Immediately precedes ACM SIGMOD/PODS'98)

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

Seattle, May 31, 1998

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:

• What should be the application programming interface for a database containing nonrelational data (e.g., semistructured data or assertions)?
• What should be the features of an application programming interface that is intended to work across multiple KR or DB systems?
• How portable are the applications written using the current APIs?
• How easy is it in practice to take advantage of extensibility in current DB and KR systems?
• How can a database query processor be easily augmented with a standalone reasoner or a legacy search engine?
• How can ontologies be used to improve the query evaluation over heterogeneous information sources?
• 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?
• How can description logics be used for representing, querying and verifying meta data?
• What kinds of control are useful to better direct the query evaluation process?
• 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 March 6, 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 : March 6, 1998
Notification of acceptance: April 1, 1998
Final papers due : May 1, 1998

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

Organization Committee

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

Workshop Location and Registration

The workshop will take place in the same location as SIGMOD/PODS'98. See http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/sigmod98/ for more information about SIGMOD/POPDS'98. For the latest information about KRDB'98, see http://www.ai.sri.com/krdb98/ .