The Tenth International Conference on Management of Data
Pune, India
14^th, 15^th and 16^th December 2000

Organized by Division II and Pune Chapter of Computer Society of India

COMAD 2000, the tenth in the COMAD series of international database conferences, will be held in Pune, India in December 2000. COMAD 2000 is being jointly organized by the Division II and Pune Chapter of Computer Society of India.

This conference will focus on new developments in the principles and practices related to data management. The conference will bring together researchers, practitioners, developers, and users to present and discuss emerging trends, concepts, techniques, technologies, and experiences in data management.

Who should attend?

Today, database support is central to almost all applications. The acceptance of the technology is also widespread. Therefore, anyone who is involved in strategy planning, analysis and design, development, implementation and management of large industrial grade applications will immensely benefit from attending this conference. The major foci of the conference and associated programmes are…

·        Research Trends

·        New Technology Developments

·        Product Features

·        Exploitation of Technology in Applications

Thus, Researchers, Students and Faculty, Trainers, Application Specialists, System Managers, Technology Watchers and Marketing Executives of Database products / Client Server / CASE Products  will all find sources of valuable information at COMAD 2000.

The central focus, however, will be its rich technical sessions of contributed papers, projecting a wide spectrum of Research results from all over the globe.

Program at a Glance

Invited Speakers

Generic Model Management - Why We Need It and How to Get There 

 Philip A. Bernstein

The size, complexity, and diversity of today's databases demand more attention toward searching, interpreting and managing them. These activities arise in databases for classical data processing, packaged applications, E-commerce, data warehousing, groupware, Internet documents, and data mining. Performing these activities well require richer machine processing of descriptions of that data, that is, of models and other meta-data. Despite 30 years of research on database support for modeling, applications and tools that manipulate discrete models remain complicated and hard to build. To improve this situation by an order of magnitude, a much higher level application programming interface is needed. We present a vision for such an interface - a generic framework in which models and mappings are first-class objects supported by high level algebraic operations. We describe tractable steps to validate the approach and to produce useful results soon as well as many hard problems that a full realization of the vision must ultimately solve.

Quality of Service Guarantees for Multimedia Digital Libraries and Beyond 

Gerhard Weikum 

Multimedia digital libraries manage large amounts of ``continuous'' data like video and audio as well as ``discrete'' data like text or image documents that are accessed by a huge number of clients. For guaranteed quality of service (QoS), glitch-free streaming of continuous data and acceptable response time for discrete data, such information servers require careful configuration and tuning with regard to data placement, request scheduling, as well as caching and pre-fetching. I present techniques for largely automating these tuning tasks, based on stochastic models for access prediction and server performance. As a result, QoS requirements of the application can be satisfied with very high probability at nearly minimum system cost and with very little human administration. I also point out challenging research avenues towards a comprehensive notion of QoS guarantees for information services.

Data mining: from standalone algorithms to integrated components and ready-made internet services

Sunita Sarawagi

Founded on the traditional fields of statistics and machine learning, data mining, as is known today, has come a long way. The past seven years have seen considerable research effort in the development of scalable algorithms that have since transitioned into standalone commercial tools. However, these tools have failed to achieve the anticipated level of market acceptance. Several reasons have been cited for this, including, non-triviality of model selection in the discovery process, unavailability of high-quality data, incognizance of prior knowledge, and, impedence mismatch with applications.

In this talk we will discuss recent technical developments that are seeking to avoid these shortcomings. Some examples are: closer integration of mining operations with conventional querying systems; mining services to let data rich mining experts share their mining models on the internet; customized mining operations embedded in vertical applications like customer relationship management; and, user-cognizant mining. The talk will address one of these issues at length.

Contributed Papers 

XML and Semi-structured Data

Schema Serialisation and Deserialisation Using XML

Richard McClatchey, Zsolt Kovacs, Jean-Marie Le Goff, Waseem hassan, Heinz Stockinger, Ian Willers, Hafeez Hoorani, Shafqat Saeed (UWE/CERN)

Deriving synonymies and homonymies of object classes in semi-structured information sources
Domenico Ursino (Unical, Italy)

Cooperative Query Answering with Density Scores
Felix Naumann, Ulf Leser (Humboldt Univ., Germany)

Design & Implementation of XML-RDBMS Interface
Vibhore Kumar (IIT_BHU, Varanasi)

Mobile and Spatio-Temporal DBs

Parametric R-Tree: An Index Structure for Moving Objects
Mengchu Cai, Peter Revesz (Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln)

Broadcasting Consistent Data to Mobile Clients with Local Cache
Kam-Yiu Lam, Edward Chan, Hei-Wing Leung, Mei-Wai Au (City Univ. Hong Kong)

Design and development of Geo-Spatial DBMS for GIS Applications
Hemalatha Diwakar (Univ. of Pune)

Temporal DBs and Meta Models

Uncertain Relations between Indeterminate Temporal Intervals
Vladimir Ryabov (University of Jyvaskyla, Finland)

Dynamic Integrity Constraint Evaluation in Deductive Temporal Databases
Maria Amelia Pacheco e Silva, Maria Ribera Sancho i Samss (Universidade Federal de Uberlandia Departamento de Ciencia da Computao, Brazil)

Adex - A meta modeling framework for repository-centric systems building
Sreedhar Reddy, Arun Bahulkar, Janak Mulani, (Tata Consultancy Services)

Application Oriented Databases

Design and Implementation of Bio-Diversity Data Management System
Srikanta Bedathur, Jayant Haritsa (Indian Institute of Science)

Fuzzy Temporal Patterns for Analyzing Stock Market Databases
Girish Palshikar, Arun Bahulkar (TRDDC, Pune)

Multi Feature Query By Multi Examples in Image Databases
Surya Nepal, M.V. Ramakrishna (Monash University)

Tuning and Optimization

Automatically Declustering Relations In A Multi-Disk Database
S Seshadri (Bell Labs), B Srikanth (Oracle)

Auto-Tuned Spline Synopses for Database Statistics Management
Arnd Christian Konig, Gerhard Weikum (University of the Saarland, Germany)

Memory Cognizant Query Optimizer: Extending Volcano
Arvind Hulgeri, S. Seshadri, S. Sudarshan (Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay)

A Resource Broker for Optimal Site and Query Scheduling
B. Vijayakumar, N.P. Gopalan (Regional Eng. College Trichy)

Data Warehousing and Mining

Mining for Association Rules without Pruning
Arul Arasu, Sreenivasa Kumar (Institute of Technology Madras)

Datacube Computation in the Presence of Attribute Hierarchies
Madhav Krishna, Sreenivasa Kumar (Indian Institute of Technology Madras)

Industry Track Presentations 

Security, Enforcement and Databases

Sanjay Pande (Tata Consultancy Services)

Companies and trust in government institutions often depends on the security of the information held in databases. Breaches of that security – whether deliberate or accidental - can have very serious consequences. Security is therefore a serious concern for both designers and users of database systems. Besides discussing security issues in databases systems and how systems may be designed to ensure secrecy, integrity and confidentiality, would also touch upon the issue of enforceability of security vis a vis theIT Act framework.

XPS – The shared nothing DB server

MuraliKrishna (Informix)

The first part of the talk will discuss the shared nothing architecture for databases and demonstrate why this has become the architecture of choice for successful commercial database servers. The shared nothing architecture provides for scaling without limits and provides a natural way for developing highly available servers. In the second part, we will discuss XPS, the shared nothing database server from Informix. XPS is the leading data warehousing database server with commercial applications hosting up to 27 terabytes of data. I shall discuss in some technical detail some of the features that allow users to manage very large amounts of data and run large queries in a highly parallel and scalable manner. A few of these features are coservers, slices, star joins, hybrid fragmentation, and zig-zag query plans.

XML Support in Oracle

Vishu Krishnamurthy (Oracle)

XML is here as the internet standard for information exchange among e-businesses and applications. With its dramatic adoption and its ability to model structured, unstructured and semi-structured data, XML has the potential of becoming the data model for internet data. In this talk, we will present Oracle's strategy to publish XML data from databases. We will show how, using object relational techniques, we can efficiently publish XML from SQL sources, without having to re-invent new optimization techniques. We will also try to compare and contrast the various options available to perform this XML generation.

Implementing Security in Enterprise Portals

Omkar Bhongir (Sybase)

A "dream portal" provides users with easy access to the wealth of information in your organization. But that dream can turn into a nightmare if the portal lacks a robust suite of security features. It is crucial that the right portal user can get access to the right information. And, it's just as important that only the right users can access that information.

Because security is critical for conducting business on the Internet, Sybase has implemented a robust security architecture for the Sybase Enterprise Portal. This presentation discusses the security architecture of the Sybase EP and its major components such as user authentication, access control, single sign-on, roles, and integration to legacy applications.

Achieving Continuous Availability with Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise 12.0

Omkar Bhongir

Using Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise 12.0, you can ensure the continuous availability of your database systems to your customers....with no hassle, no confusion, no need for them to reconnect. Adaptive Server Enterprise 12.0 enables you to move end-users from a primary system to a back-up system in the middle of the day, in the middle of a transaction without missing a beat. It insulates customers from the complexities of back-end systems. Adaptive Server Enterprise 12.0 leverages cluster architecture to provide failover to a backup server without losing any non-committed data or severing user connections. Adaptive Server Enterprise 12.0 is designed to work in concert with existing hardware and software high availability solutions from third party vendors, including Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems to deliver maximum systems availability.

Data Links: Manage Enterprise Content - Linking File Systems with Databases

Inderpal Narang, Suparna Bhattacharjee (IBM)

Data Links is atechnology, invented and developed at the IBM Almaden Research Center, that extends Database Management Systems with support for external file references in database tables, allowing management of files that reside outside the database as though they are logically within the database. Data Links guarantees referential integrity to these external files, provides enhanced access control to them, and supports automatic and coordinated backup and restore capability within transactional environments that are crucial for data management. Enterprises can manage files on multiple distinct file servers within Data Links databases, allowing robust centralized control over distributed resources across intranets. Database data and datalinked files can be replicated together across independent systems in an atomic and consistent manner for availability and load balancing.

By bringing together database and file system data, Data Links provides a foundation for the next generation of enterprise content management.

Data Links is available as a part of IBM's DB2 Universal Database. The technology has now been deployed by several corporations and institutes, such as Boeing, Dassault, and automative manufacturers, to provide database management of distributed scientific and engineering data stored in operating system files. The DATALINK datatype has been accepted an SQL/ISO standard which is expected to be published by the end of 2000.

Tutorials 

XML: Data Driving Business? 

Vasudev Kamath, PSPL Pune 

Laks V. S. Lakshmanan, IIT Bombay and Concordia University

The need for business document standardization comes from the fact that it shifts the competitive edge away from the document form or content, to the manner in which it is used for decision making -- where it squarely belongs. The advent of XML holds much promise for achieving, among other things, such business document standardization. This tutorial consists of two parts. In Part 1, we will cover the standardization issues from a business or end user's perspective. We will give examples of standardization efforts, including standards like CommerceOne. Following this, we will describe the experience (the first author has had) trying to define a set of standards for Indian business practices and for online business data interchange. In Part 2, we will focus attention on the data model behind XML and related data management issues such as storage, query languages, and query processing, where we will draw on the lessons learned from recent work, in the database community, on the so-called semi-structured data. This part will cover some of the technical challenges arising in managing XML data.

Data Mining for Hypertext

Soumen Chakrabarti, IIT Bombay

With over 800 million pages covering most areas of human endeavor, the World-wide Web is a fertile ground for data mining research to make a difference to the effectiveness of information search. Today, Web surfers access the Web through two dominant interfaces: clicking on hyperlinks and searching via keyword queries. This process is often tentative and unsatisfactory. Better support is needed for expressing one's information need and dealing with a search result in more structured ways than available now. Data mining and machine learning have significant roles to play towards this end. In this tutorial we will survey recent advances in learning and mining problems related to hypertext in general and the Web in particular. We will review the continuum of supervised to semi-supervised to unsupervised learning problems, highlight the specific challenges which distinguish data mining in the hypertext domain from data mining in the context of data warehouses, and summarize the key areas of recent and ongoing research.

Information Mediation: Integrating Information from Multiple Information Sources

Naveen Ashish and Amit P. Sheth

Large Scale Distributed Information Systems Lab (LSDIS) University of Georgia, Athens

We discuss issues in building information mediators - systems that provide structured and integrated query access to multiple, distributed and heterogeneous information sources such as databases of different kinds or Web sources. We describe progress in building mediators, spanning several key areas such as information modeling of various sources, query planning and optimization, wrapper generation for semi-structured Web sources, performance optimization by materialization and inconsistency resolution of information across multiple sources. Besides research progress and technical solutions we will also describe available mediator prototypes and software, mediator products from industry and start-up ventures in the information integration area.

Mobile and Wireless Database Systems

Vijay Kumar

Computer Sc. Telecommunications University of Missouri-Kansas City

In conventional database systems data management is performed on a static platform. Processing nodes are geographically static but the data or application is mobile. This approach has been very effective and managed well the data processing needs of organizations and individuals alike. However, for the emerging trends in information processing and new requirements of information consumer, the limitations of the conventional systems have become a serious bottleneck. Mobile database system is one of the effective disciplines that has enormous potential. In this tutorial we discuss

(a) basics of wireless platform,
(b) review those features of the platform which are necessary to visualize a mobile database system,
(c) discuss problems of information management in this platform,
(d) discuss and analyze existing solutions, and
(e) look at the future trends and things to come.

Database Support for e-Commerce Applications (Handouts: 2 slides/page and 4 slides/page)

Manoj Kumar, IBM Research Division, India Research Laboratory, New Delhi

Anant Jhingran, Director, IBM Research Division, Almaden Research Center

Electronic commerce applications are inherently database applications. The buyers/sellers and their characterization, products and their properties and pricing/discount information are stored in databases. Various commerce processes such as navigation of catalog or search for a product,, access control policies to restrict buyers/sellers from performing certain actions on certain objects are database operations. Information between commerce servers is exchanged as XML/EDI documents or some other standard format. We review the data representation and operations performed by B2C commerce platforms and B2B marketplaces and discuss the research issues relevant to continuing progress of these technologies.

Conference Registration  

Registration for the conference and the tutorials is now open.

There is no separate registration for Tutorials. There is a single registration for attending tutorials and the main conference.

To register to attend the Workshop of the Indian Database Research Community visit the Workshop Web page.

Registration Fees (Indian Delegates)

We are examining the possibility of partial industrial sponsorships for academic researchers. If you are interested in sponsoring or getting sponsorship, please contact aruna@pspl.co.in

Registration Fees (Foreign Delegates)

Please register by filling the registration form . Payment can be made by Cheque / demand draft. The Cheque / demand draft should be drawn in favour of COMAD 2000 payable at Pune. (Outstation cheques should add Rs. 25 towards clearing charges.)

Indian students involved in database-related research projects are eligible for the student rates. These reduced rates are available for a limited number of students. To apply, (a) fill the registration form, and (b) send an e-mail to krithi AT cse.iitb.ac.in giving (i) the name and email address of your project advisor and (ii) a one-page plain-text description of your project.

Please mail the filled in forms and payments to the address given below...

Mr. C.G. Sahasrabuddhe
Computer Society of India, Pune Chapter,
56, Erandawana, Prabhat House,
Damle Path, Behind INDSEARCH,
Off Law College Road,
Pune - 411 004. India.

Tel : +91-20-546 44 36
Fax : +91-20-542 13 46

Alternately, you may contact us by email at csipune@wmi.co.in for further information.

Proceedings

The delegates will receive the Proceedings of the conference - which will include the invited and contributed papers presented at the conference.

To ensure wide visibility of material published at the conference we have made arrangements with ACM Sigmod for including the proceedings of the conference in the SIGMOD on-line and CD-ROM archives.

Accommodation 

Following is a partial list of hotels in Pune.

Delegates may contact the hotels directly for their accommodation needs.

Venue and Dates

Dates : The conference and tutorials are on 14th, 15th and 16th December 2000.

Venue:

The Pride Hotel
5, University Road
Shivajinagar
Pune - 411 005.

Tel : +91-20-553 4567 / 553 0444
Fax : +91-20-553 3228

Registration begins at : 8.00 am on 14^th December 2000.

About Pune

Situated at an altitude of 570 metres, surrounded by the Sahyadri hills in Western Maharashtra lies the historic city of Pune. Popularly knows as the 'Queen of the Deccan', it is spread over an area of about 140 sq.km. and has a population of about 30 lakhs. Its pleasant climate and proximity to the glitzy state capital, Bombay, has made it the second most important city in the state of Maharahstra. It is a favourite holiday resort for not only the inhabitants of the financial capital of India, but with people all over the country.

For many years, Pune was the pulse of the Maratha land and has given India some of its most memorable personalities. Shivaji, the Maratha king, who defied the Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb, was brought up in Pune. The city also served as the head quarters of the mighty Maratha empire under the Peshwas, until its annexation in 1818 by the British East India Company, after which it continued as the regional capital during the monsoon, when Bombay becomes unbearable. Pune's other famous son was the great freedom fighter Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak.

Pune, today, is very much a modern city despite its quaint old values and traditions. The slow and easy pace of life provides a much needed relief from the hectic pace of the state capital. In fact, it is also called as "The Pensioners' City" because of the fact that many people in the state finally come to settle in Pune after retirement.

The city is liberally sprinkled with software companies and is counted amongst the top three software cities of the country. The numerous educational institutions, Pune's proximity to Bombay and its easy paced life are some of the important reasons for it being high on the software map.

The city is surrounded by military establishments like the Southern Command, the famous National Defence Academy, R&D Engineers etc. The city of Pune is distinctly divided into the older half, where the localities have been named after the days of the week and the more modern bustling cantonment..

The weather in Pune is dry but chilly in December and warm clothing is recommended. Temperatures during the winter are normally around 25°C during daytime and around 10°C at night.

Getting to Pune

By Air

For those coming from International destinations, you could fly into Mumbai or Delhi.   Mumbai is the closest international airport.  There are convenient flights to Pune from Delhi as well.

You could buy a direct ticket to Pune (via Mumbai).  Jet Airways http://www.jetairways.com/ has three flights to Pune from Mumbai and will arrange transit accommodation in Mumbai if you book a through international ticket. Please confirm this with your airline agent while you book your ticket.

There are two flights – one each on Indian Airlines and Jet Airways every evening from Delhi.

There are also direct flights from Chennai and Bangalore.

By Road from Mumbai

On request, we could arrange for an air-conditioned taxi from Mumbai Airport to Pune.  This would cost about Rs. 6,000 for a complete taxi.

There is also a Mumbai-Pune taxi service that runs between Dadar Circle and Pune railway station. Taxis take about 4.5 hours to cover the distance. They seat four (Padmini) to five (Ambassador), which can be a little uncomfortable. You can book the entire taxi or pay for two seats, if you would like a more comfortable ride.

The taxis run round-the-clock. The fare for the ride is to be paid at the starting point and costs about Rs 200 per seat. A full Ambassador taxi costs Rs.1, 000 while a Padmini costs Rs 800.

There is also a mini-bus from the Airport to Pune.  The one-way fare is Rs. 400. 

By Rail

For travel by train there are several trains from Mumbai to Pune and back.

The recommended train is the 6.40 am Shatabdi Express is air-conditioned throughout. The price of Rs 325 includes breakfast, tea or coffee and mineral water. Buy a ticket (any class) to Pune at the ticket office, get on the train and pay the difference. Seats are available most of the time. In fact there is additional coach exclusively for late walk-ins.

Trains depart at regular intervals from 6:00 a.m. through 11:30 p.m.

ORGANIZERS

General Conference Chair

Anand Deshpande (anand@pspl.co.in)
Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd., Pune

Program Committee Chairs

Krithi Ramamritham (krithi@cse.iitb.ac.in)
IIT Bombay & UMass, Amherst

Rakesh Agrawal (ragrawal@almaden.ibm.com)
IBM Almaden Research Center

Organizing Committee Chairs

Arun Kadekodi (arun@soft-corner.com)
Soft Corner, Pune

Arun Ghaisas (aghaisas@cms.co.in)
Systime, Pune

Tutorial Chairs:

S. Sudarshan (sudarsha@cse.iitb.ac.in)
IIT Bombay

Divesh Srivastava (divesh@research.att.com)
AT&T Research

Panel Chairs:

T.V. Prabhakar (tvp@iitk.ac.in)
IIT Kanpur

Surajit Chaudhuri (surajitc@microsoft.com)
Microsoft Research

Industrial Program Chairs:

V. Govindarajan (govi@aztec.soft.net)
Aztec Technologies

S. Seshadri (seshadri@aura.research.bell-labs.com )
Lucent Bell Labs.

Publication Chair:

T. M. Vijayaraman (vijay@pspl.co.in)
Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd.

Publicity Chair:

Vijay Kumar (kumar@cstp.umkc.edu)
Univ. of Missouri, Kansas City

Conference Management :

R.S. Tavildar (rst@pspl.co.in)
Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd. Pune

Manoj Tandon (tandon@tropmet.ernet.in)
IITM, Pune

Finance Committee :

Ashok Pawar
SBI, Pune

Event Manager :

C.G. Sahasrabuddhe (csi_pune@vsnl.net)
Supertech Solutions Ltd., Pune

Advisory Committee :

A.K. Pathak (anand.k.pathak@cummins.com)
Cummins India Ltd., Pune

Vrinda Ballal
L&T IT, Pune

Host Chapter Chairman:

Dr. Sharad Joshi (sljoshi@unipune.ernet.in)
University of Pune

Program Committee Members

• Divy Agrawal (UC Santa Barbara)
• B.R. Badrinath (Rutgers Univ)
• Alex Buchmann (Tech. Univ. Darmstadt)
• Jan Van den Bussche (U. of Limburg, Belgium)
• Mike Carey (Propel Software Corporation)
• Panos Chrysanthis (Univ. of Pittsburgh)
• Anindya Datta (Georgia Tech.)
• Umeshwar Dayal (HP Labs)
• Klaus Dittrich (Univ. Zuerich)
• Christos Faloutsos (CMU)
• Christoph Freytag (Humboldt Univ. Berlin)
• Sumit Ganguly (IIT Kanpur)
• Narain Gehani (Lucent Bell Labs)
• Jiawei Han (Simon Fraser Univ. Canada)
• Jayant Haritsa (IISc, Bangalore)
• Yannis Ioannidis (Univ. of Athens, Hellas, Greece)
• H. V. Jagadish (Univ. of Michigan)
• Sushil Jajodia (George Mason Univ.)
• Anant Jhingran (IBM Almaden)
• Leonid Kalinichenko (Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow)
• Kamal Karlapalem (UST, Hong Kong)
• Masaru Kitsuregawa (Univ. of Tokyo)
• Ramamohanarao Kotagiri (Univ. of Melbourne)
• Laks Lakshmanan (Concordia Univ. and IIT Bombay)
• Daniel Lieuwen (Lucent Bell Labs)
• Tok Wang Ling (National Univ. of Singapore)
• David Lomet (Microsoft Research)
• Hongjun Lu (UST, Hong Kong)
• S. N. Maheshwari (IIT Delhi)
• A. K. Majumdar (IIT Kharagpur)
• C. Mohan (IBM Almaden)
• Richard Muntz (UCLA)
• Sham Navathe (Georgia Tech.)
• Gultekin Ozsoyoglu (Case Western Reserve Univ.)
• Kishore Padmanabhan (Tata Consultancy Services, India.)
• Jan Paredaens (University of Antwerp, Belgium)
• Janaki Ram (IIT Madras)
• Raghu Ramakrishnan (Univ. of Wisconsin)
• C. V. Ravishankar (UC Riverside)
• Betty Salzberg (Northeastern Univ)
• Sunita Sarawagi (IIT Bombay)
• Hans Schek (ETH, Zurich)
• John Shafer (Propel Software Corporation)
• Dennis Shasha (NYU)
• Oded Shmueli (Technion, Israel)
• Eric Simon (INRIA, France)
• Andrzej Skowron (Warsaw University, Poland)
• Rick Snodgrass (Univ. of Arizona)
• S. Sudarshan (IIT Bombay)
• Gerhard Weikum (Univ. of Saarbrucken)
• Kyu Young Whang (KAIST, Korea)