Domenico Sacca

The area "Logic-Based Databases" deals with all aspects of databases that are influenced by logic and, therefore, it does not coincide with deductive databases and DATALOG for it is involved with many other issues as well. To stress this pervasive nature of the area, the news features the reports on two very popular topics which cannot be conveyed into the deductive database mainstreams: WEB data management and spatial databases.

In the first report, Giansalvatore Mecca discusses some stimulating research issues in WEB data management, particularly the evolution of database technology to cope with semistructured data such as the ones handled by WEB. The role of logic in this framework is promising both for modelling and querying data. It is interesting to mention that Mecca, together with other scientists, is organizing an International Workshop on the Web and Databases (WebDB'98), to be held in conjunction with EBDT'98 in Valencia, Spain, March 27--28, 1998. The topics of interest are: data models for the Web, query languages and systems for Web data, semi-structured data management and the Web, management of Web documents, finding structure in Web information, data integration over the Web, warehousing of Web data, data-intensive applications on the Web, methodologies and tools for Web data publishing, mining, exploring and visualizing the Web, transactions on the Web, security and integrity issues. The deadline for submission will be probably passed when this news will appear but there will be still time to attend the workshop.

Jan Paradaens' report describes the main aspects of spatial databases and their relationships with computational geometry, computational logic, and constraint databases. Particularly, the author provides many hints for a thorough investigation of the interaction between deductive databases and spatial databases.

The area news also includes the reports on two important database events in 1997: Riccardo Torlone overviews about PODS'96 symposium, which is probably the most prestigious conference on database theory, and Franz Baader, Manfred A. Jeusfeld, and Werner Nutt give a detailed description of the workshop KRDB ("Knowledge Representation Meets Databases''), which took place in conjunction with VLDB'97 in Athens, Greece, and whose main topic was accessing heterogeneous information.

Another contribution is the node profile of the Technical University of Vienna by Nicola Leone. This profile, announced in the past issue of the newsletter, appears with some delay but this inconvenient give us the possibility to be informed on the recent advances obtained by the very active research group in Vienna.

Finally, concerning the area activities for 1998, we are organizing a second edition of the workshop LID -- 'Logic in Databases', probably in September and in Cyprus. A main topic of the workshop should be data mining. The first edition of LID was held on July 1996 in San Miniato (Pisa, Italy) and was organized by the area in cooperation with the project ECUS033 "DEUS EX MACHINA: non-determinism in deductive databases". We shall communicate more information on the event as soon as the last organizative details will be settled.

Domenico Sacca

DEIS Department

Universita della Calabria

87030 Rende (CS), Italy

E-mail: sacca@unical.it