KRDB 1997
Call for Papers & Participation

Workshop immediately after VLDB'97

4th International Workshop
KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION MEETS DATABASES (KRDB'97):
Intelligent Access to Heterogeneous Information

Athens, Greece, August 30, 1997

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. Nevertheless, until recently there has been little cross-fertilization between the two areas. Research in KR mostly concentrated on expressive formalism with sophisticated reasoning services, usually under the assumption that the size of the KB is relatively small. In contrast, DB research was concerned with efficiently storing and retrieving large amounts of data, but the languages for describing schema information were rather simple, and reasoning about the schema played only a minor role.

In recent years, this distiction 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 becomes 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 is promising. Unlike its predecessor workshops, which took place in conjunction with AI conferences, KRDB'97 is held in conjunction with the database conference VLDB'97.

In 1997, we intend to focus the discussions at KRDB on the problem of how to support intelligent access to heterogeneous information sources, with applications like Data Warehousing and Internet Access in mind. The following is an (incomplete) list of topics that are of interest in this context:

• What are adequate languages to describe a user's demand for information and the contents of information sources? Can more sophisticated schema languages support this task?
• Which kind of reasoning is required to mediate between information demand and information supply? Can reasoning services from KR contribute to a solution?
• What background knowledge about an application domain is needed to formulate and interpret queries over a set of heterogeneous information sources? Is there a role for ontologies?
• Which is the view that an access tool for a data warehouse should provide to a user? Should the data warehouse appear as a relational database, a set of data cubes, a semantic network, or as a combination of all this?
• What are adequate formalisms for representing and querying meta data?
• Should contradictions between different information sources be resolved or is it possible to give meaningful answers to queries in the presence of contradictions?
• How does incompleteness of information affect system design and query processing ?
• What are suitable formalisms to represent data quality like accuracy, timeliness, relevance etc.?

KRDB is a forum for exchanging ideas between DB and KR people. Equally important is the KRDB tradition of stimulating the discussion between academic people and practitioners. Thus, we warmly welcome positions papers from both sides. We are sure that the atmosphere in Athens and the conjunction with the VLDB conference will contribute to the success.

Participation

Participation in the workshop will be by invitation only. If you want to attend the workshop, you should submit a position paper (see SUBMISSION OF PAPERS below) that describes your current research and possibly previous accomplishments related to the workshop topic. Based on these papers, the participants will be organized into groups that present their positions and then discuss them in a panel.
Participants are required to register to VLDB'97. Information on registration to VLDB '97 can be obtained from http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/VLDB97/ Detailed information on registration to KRDB'97 can be obtained from http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/KRDB97/

Submission of Papers

Authors are invited to submit position papers not exceeding 4 pages (1500 words). Rather than describing new technical results, these papers should describe the position that the author takes w.r.t. the workshop topics. The position papers will be reviewed with focus on relevance and potential input to discussions.

Submissions should be sent by April 30, 1997 to

        Manfred Jeusfeld
        Aachen University of Technology (RWTH)
        Informatik 5, 52056 Aachen, Germany
        Email: jeusfeld@informatik.rwth-aachen.de

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

Proceedings of earlier KRDB workshops can be accessed via

http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/ for reference.

Program Committee

Alex Borgida, Rutgers University, USA
Mokrane Bouzeghoub, PRISM Paris, France
Georg Lausen, University of Freiburg, Germany
Maurizio Lenzerini, University of Rome 'La Sapienza', Italy
Alon Levy, AT&T Labs, USA
Nicolaas Mars, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Joerg Mueller, Mitsubishi, UK
Mike Papazoglou, University of Tilburg, The Netherlands
Gunter Saake, University of Magdeburg, Germany

Organization Committee

Franz Baader, Aachen University of Technology, Germany
Manfred Jeusfeld, Aachen University of Technology, Germany
Werner Nutt, Hebrew University Jerusalem, Israel

Workshop Location and Registration

The workshop will take place in the same hotel as VLDB'97. The hotel is pleasantly located about 20 km outside of Athens. We require workshop participants to register to VLDB'97. Hotel booking and accomodation is also via VLDB'97. Please contact vldb97@dbnet.ece.ntua.gr or http://www.dbnet.ece.ntua.gr/VLDB97/ for more information. There are no additional fees for registering to KRDB'97.