Foreward: Sigmod 1996 Proceedings

These proceedings contain the technical papers selected for presentation at the 1996 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, held in Montreal, Canada, June 4-6, 1996, in conjunction with the ACM Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (PODS). The SIGMOD conference, sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and its Special Interest Group on Management of Data (SIGMOD), is an annual international forum for the dissemination and discussion of new ideas in database technology and the presentation of database prototypes.

Besides research papers, we encouraged submission of experience papers. Experience and concept papers were evaluated by the same program committee. While the evaluation criteria were different, the standards applied were comparable, and once accepted, experience papers were not distinguished from research papers. Out of a total of 290 submissions, the program committee selected 47 papers for presentation and inclusion in this proceedings. The quality of submissions was very high, and the program committee could happily have accepted another 20 papers. For the first time, electronic submission of abstracts was required of all authors, permitting program committee members to express preferences, based on the abstracts, for the papers they would like to review. Our subjective assessment of the results indicate that this process resulted in a better match between papers and referees.

The Industrial Program, including three outstanding plenary addresses and five special sessions, was energetically organized by Michael Brodie and Rafael Alonso, with guidance from a distinguished Industrial Advisory Board. The Tutorials program and the Panels program were ably chaired respectively by Alberto Mendelzon and Jacob Stein. A special Industry Day, with simultaneous translation between French and English, was held on the first day of the conference to draw the applications oriented professionals in Montréal and Québec. The industry day featured a keynote address and presentations by finalists in the Quebec Prix d'Excellence for information technology. The day included a welcome by Sylvie Dupuis, the president of F.I.Q., the Quebec association of information professionals, and was concluded by the Hon. Rita Dionne-Marsolais, Minister for Industry, Commerce, Science, and Technology. The Industry Day was enthusiastically organized by Pierre Bourque, Mario Robert, and Ghislain Lévesque. It was generously sponsored in part by F.I.Q. and by the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, Science, and Technology. The Industrial Program and the Industrial Day contributed to the conference goal of encouraging interaction between industry and academia.

Vigorous efforts were made, on behalf of both Sigmod and PODS, by the Publicity chair, Tamer Özsu, by the Local Arrangements co-chairs, Rokia Missaoui and Brigitte Kerhervé, by the Registration chair, Laks Lakshmanan, and by the Treasurer, Ghislain Lévesque. The dedicated and able work of these volunteers was essential to the success of SIGMOD/PODS'96, and their enthusiasm made the organization a pleasure.

SIGMOD continued its tradition of presenting excellent research prototypes, selected by Christos Faloutsos and coordinated technically by André Clouâtre. A Best Papers committee considered not only the papers presented this year, but also looked back ten years for retroactive acknowledgement. Local publicity for Industry Day was undertaken by Céline Lavoie. David Morin professionally designed the cover of these Proceedings and the Montréal logo.

We are deeply indebted to the herculean efforts of the Program Committee, and of the external referees who helped review the papers, particularly keeping in mind that several PC members had their papers rejected solely on account of their not meeting the substantially stricter standard set for PC papers.

H. V. Jagadish              T. H. Merrett      Inderpal Singh Mumick
Program Committee Chair     General Chair 	Proceedings Chair

Inderpal Singh Mumick, mumick@research.att.com