This volume contains the Proceedings of the 32nd International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB), held in Seoul, South Korea, September 12-15, 2006. The annual VLDB conference has established itself as the premier international forum for the dissemination and exchange of ideas in the research and practice of data management technology and applications. This year's program includes 2 keynote talks by distinguished members of the data management community, Anant Jhingran of IBM and Vishal Sikka of SAP; a 10-year best paper award presentation, 83 research papers, 11 industry and experience papers, 29 demonstrations, 1 panel, and 5 tutorials.
This year's conference continues to implement the ˇ°broadeningˇ± initiative introduced by the VLDB Endowment four years ago through the Core Database Technology and Infrastructure for Information Systems tracks. Combined, these two research tracks attracted a record number of submissions, 626, which constitutes a dramatic 21% increase over last year's conference. Consequently, the competition was fierce, and the acceptance rate dropped to 13.2%, compared to last year's rate of 16.1%. The Core Database Technology track Program Committee, chaired by David Lomet, accepted 46 of the 334 papers submitted; and the Infrastructure for Information Systems track Program Committee, chaired by Gustavo Alonso, accepted 37 of the 292 papers submitted.
In addition to the two research tracks, this year's conference continues the successful tradition of an Industrial Applications and Experience track, aimed at attracting papers on novel product features, applications, and case studies. This track, too, saw a huge jump in popularity, receiving 59 submissions, which constitutes an increase of 28% over last year's conference. The Program Committee of this track, co-chaired by Guy Lohman, Martin Kersten, and Sang Cha, accepted 11 papers, an acceptance rate of 18.6%. In addition to these papers, the program also includes an invited session of speakers from Korean Government and Industry, and an industry panel on the currently relevant topic of globalization.
The ever popular Demonstrations track received 84 submissions, of which the Demo Program Committee, chaired by Tore Risch, Maria Orlowska, and Keun Ho Ryu, selected 29 for presentation at the conference. Rounding out the program is a panel selected by a committee consisting of Michael Carey, Masaru Kisuregawa, and Seog Park; and five tutorials selected by a committee consisting of Christos Faloutsos, Tiziana Catarci, and Kyuseok Shim. We express our thanks to the members of these committees for putting together such an excellent program.
Accompanying the main conference are 11 workshops on popular, emerging topics, and a Ph.D. Workshop, which encourages participation by doctoral students. These workshops were selected by the Workshop Chairs, Ming-Chien Shan and Sang-goo Lee, from the 15 proposals submitted.
Finally, the program includes a plenary 10-year best paper award session. The recipient of this prestigious award for the ˇ°most influential paper in the VLDB Proceedings 10 years agoˇ± is the following paper from VLDB 1996: "Querying Heterogeneous Information Sources Using Source Descriptions" by Alon Levy (Halevy), Anand Rajaraman, and Joann Ordille. The winners were selected by a committee consisting of Umeshwar Dayal, Kyu-Young Whang, and Oded Shmueli. An invited paper from the winners is included in this volume.
The high quality of the program owes much to the authors who submitted papers for consideration, to our distinguished colleagues on the Program Committees, and to the external reviewers who assisted the Program Committees in evaluating the papers. To them, we extend our heartfelt gratitude.
Generous thanks are due to Kyu-Young Whang, the General Chair of the conference, and to the many people who helped with local arrangements, publicity, web site management, registration, and other important functions, all of which are critical to the success of the conference. Special thanks are due to the Proceedings Chair, Young-Kuk Kim, and to the eProceedings co-Chairs, Sang-Won Lee and Young-Koo Lee.
The work of the Program Committee, and especially that of the Program Chairs, was greatly facilitated by the use of the Microsoft Conference Management Tool. We thank Surajit Chaudhuri and the CMT support team for their help.
Finally, we thank all the participants and attendees for contributing to the success of the conference. To you and to all those who did not have the opportunity to attend the conference, we are pleased to offer this volume as a snapshot of the state of data management research and practice today. We hope you will find this an invaluable reference and a source of inspiration for new ideas.
Umeshwar Dayal
General Program Chair
David Lomet
Core Database Technology Program Chair
Gustavo Alonso
Infrast r ucture for Information Systems Program Chair
Guy Lohman, Martin Kersten, Sang Cha
Industrial Applications and Experience Program co-Chairs