MOD

The 2002 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, was held June 4-6, 2002 at the spectacular Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Monona Terrace conference center in Madison, Wisconsin. The SIGMOD conference has long held its status a leading forum for database researchers, practitioners, developers, and users to explore cutting-edge ideas and to exchange techniques, tools, and experiences. This year we are pleased to have a particularly strong program, including significant representation from both industry and academia and contributions from around the world. The SIGMOD conference is sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and its Special Interest Group on Management of Data (SIGMOD). As has become customary, two days of the conference were overlapped with the Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (PODS). In addition, there were a number of important events co-located with SIGMOD this year, including the 5th International Workshop on the Web and Databases (WebDB), the Workshop on Research Issues in Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery (DMKD), and the New Database Faculty Symposium.As with previous years, acceptance into the conference proceedings was extremely competitive. From the 240 research program submissions, the program committee selected 42 papers for presentation and inclusion in the proceedings. These papers span the range of traditional database topics as well as issues of emerging interest such as data streaming, middle-tier data management, and integration with web services and the WWW. The: program committee worked hard to select these papers through a detailed review process and active discussion both electronically and at the program committee meeting held in January at Berkeley. We are deeply indebted to Surajit Chaudhuri and Jonathan Simon for their efforts in developing and hosting the Conference Management Tool at Microsoft. We used the CMT to run the entire submissions and review process for research papers, including the program committee meeting. We would also like to thank Umesh Dayal, who took on extra work to help manage the review process.In addition to the research track, we had 41 submissions to the Demonstrations track, of which 21 projects were invited to present. The Demonstrations track has become a key venue for the early dissemination of cutting-edge prototype and systems development experience. Paul Aoki chaired the demos program committee, which put together a diverse and exciting program. The Industrial program committee, chaired by Mike Carey took an active role in soliciting quality submissions and have put together a program that is a key component of this year's conference. Likewise, Donald Kossmann and Peter Scheuermann and the tutorial committee organized an excellent slate of Panels and Tutorials to round out the program.