Call for Papers DEXA 2006 Workshop on Flexible Database and Information System Technology (FlexDBIST-06) Crakow, Poland, September 7, 2006 Workshop web site: http://flexdbist06.unibg.it Aim and Scope ------------- Information systems are able to deal with an incredible amount of data, concerning every aspect of real life. Data are dealt with by heterogeneous systems, concern heterogeneous application domains, are structured in heterogeneous data formats; furthermore, semi-structured (XML) or unstructured (textual) documents are becoming important data sources for enterprises and organizations. Enterprises and organizations need to deal with such heterogeneous and often very large (and possibly heterogeneous) volumes of data, which may also be uncertain, imprecise and incomplete; for instance a typical question is "how to take advantage from such large volumes of data, in order to extract useful information for decision making, for discovering and sharing useful knowledge, etc. ?". In other words, they need technology for Flexible Data Management in Databases and Information Systems. Flexibility in such a context might be intended in several ways; some of them might be the following (but other may be found): - the capability of easily querying large volumes of data, in order to obtain significant or useful descriptions; - the capability of integrating heterogeneous data, possibly inconsistent, coming from different distributed and incoherent and data sources; - the capability of integrating structured, semi-structured and unstructured (textual) data; - the capability of managing changing in time data; - the capability of modelling databases, defining query languages, building information systems dealing with large volumes of data, heterogeneous and distributed data, uncertain or imprecise data, changing in time data. Several researchers are dealing with Flexible Data Management in Databases and Information Systems. Researchers working on data models and techniques able to manage imprecise and uncertain data in databases are proposing database models able to deal with imprecision and uncertainty in the data modelling phase, as well as during querying. They generally come either from the database community or from the soft computing community, and are separately dealing with the topic. Researchers working on data warehousing techniques have to face problems concerning flexible management of heterogeneous and historical data in multidimensional views of data; since data come from heterogeneous sources, and their structure changes in time, flexible techniques for managing data collected in data warehouses are needed. Researchers working on data mining and knowledge discovery techniques, are providing technology and tools for discovering useful and/or unexpected information from large volumes of data; flexibility must be intended not only as the need to deal with heterogeneous and imprecise source data, but also as the need to deal with several formats for extracted patterns and knowledge (which is the focus of Inductive Databases). The Information Retrieval community, that is providing solutions for Web search engines, is now moving towards new emerging research themes, such as the definition of more effective techniques to index, categorize, filter and retrieve collections of multimedia documents heterogeneously structured and rapidly changing in time, problems that are faced by the database and data mining communities as well. The goal of the proposed workshop is to bring together researchers working on methods and techniques for Flexible Data Management in Databases and Information Systems in the broadest sense. Papers proposing models, methodologies and techniques concerning management of imprecise and uncertain data, data warehousing, data mining and knowledge discovery, spatial and spatio-temporal databases, as well as information retrieval are encouraged. Any kind of flexible data management issue is of interest: data models, query languages, textual and semi-structured data management, integrated application of different techniques (e.g. database, data mining and information retrieval methodologies and techniques). Position papers are also welcome and encouraged. This initiative is the natural evolution of successful SIUFDB-04 (DEXA 2004 International Workshop on Supporting Imprecision and Uncertainty in Flexible Databases) and IDDI-05 (DEXA 2005 International Workshop on Integrating Data Mining, Databases and Information Retrieval), and like them it is aimed at yielding a cross-fertilisation in the specific field. Topics ------ The topics of the Workshop include but are not limited to the followings: * Database models for uncertain, imprecise, incomplete and vague data. * Database models for flexible data warehouses. * Database models for data mining and knowledge discovery. * Database models for information retrieval applications. * Query languages dealing with imprecision and vagueness. * Query languages for flexible data warehouses. * Query languages for data miming and knowledge discovery. * Query languages for information retrieval. * Flexible management of (vague or uncertain) Spatial and Spatio-temporal data. * Data Mining and Information Retrieval over uncertain data. * Text Mining. * Flexible languages for data or text mining. * Inductive databases. * Flexible management of (collections of) semi-structured data and documents (XML). * Uncertain, imprecise, incomplete and vague semi-structured data. * Data mining and knowledge discovery applied to semi-structured data. * Information retrieval applied to semi-structured data. * Integrated approaches. * Flexible management of large volumes of data. Submission of papers -------------------- * Papers should be original and not previously published elsewhere. Basic, applied research and position papers are solicited. * Papers should not be more than 5 pages long using IEEE two column style. Papers that fail to comply with length limitations risk rejection. * Electronic submission in PDF format is preferred, but Postscript will also be accepted. Please note that hard copy and fax submissions will not be accepted. * Precise submission instructions can be found on the workshop web site. * Workshop Proceedings will be published by IEEE Computer Society Press. Important Dates --------------- * Paper Submission: March 27, 2006 * Notification of Acceptance: April 27, 2006 * Camera-Ready Copy Due: May 15, 2006 * Symposium: September 7, 2006 Organizer --------- Giuseppe Psaila University of Bergamo Faculty of Engineering Viale Marconi 5 24044 Dalmine (BG) - Italy e-mail: psaila@unibg.it Program Committee ----------------- Chair: Gloria Bordogna CNR Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Istituto per La Dinamica dei Processi Ambientali, Sez. Milano, Lab. Georisorse Via Pasubio 5 24044 Dalmine (BG) - Italy e-mail: gloria.bordogna@idpa.cnr.it Antonio Badia, University of Louisville (USA) Elena Baralis, Politecnico di Torino (Italy) Alvaro Barreiro, University of Corunna (Spain) Patrick Bosc, IRISA/ENSSAT (France) Jianhua Chen, Louisiana State University (USA) Eliseo Clementini, University of L'Aquila (Italy) Stefan Conrad, University of Dusseldorf (Germany) Rita De Caluwe, Ghent University (Belgium) Ander de Keijzer, University of Twente (The Netherlands) Guy de Tré, Ghent University (Belgium) Dion Hoe-Lian Goh, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) Gösta Grahne, Concordia University (Canada) Enrique Herrera Viedma, University of Granada (Spain) Medo Kantardzic, University of Louisville (USA) Andreas Karwath, University of Freiburg (Germany) Gabriella Kazai, Queen Mary University of London (UK) Donald H. Kraft, Louisiana State University (USA) Sanjay Madria, University of Missouri-Rolla (USA) Maria Jose Martin Bautista, University of Granada (Spain) Rosa Meo, University of Turin (Italy) Barbara Oliboni, University of Verona (Italy) Gabriella Pasi, University of Milano Bicocca (Italy) Chiara Renso, CNR ISTI (Italy) Crawford Revie, University of Strathclyde (UK) Celine Robardet, INSA Lyon (France) Ulrich Schiel, Universidade Federal de Campina Grande (Brazil) Timos Sellis, National Technical University of Athens (Greece) Maurice van Keulen, University of Twente (The Netherlands) Christelle Vangenot, Ecole Polytecnique Fedrale de Lausanne (Switzerland) Maria Amparo Vila, Miranda University of Granada (Spain) Robert Villa, CNR ITC, (Italy) Agnes Voisard, Fraunhofer ISST and FU Berlin (Germany) Jozef Zurada, University of Louisville (USA)