Author Description

As record-keeping and decision-making in industry and government are increasingly based on information stored in computer-processable data bases, the need for improved hardware and software technology for building, managing, and using these data bases is becoming ever more important. This need is particularly acute in a complex society where the multitude and variety of interrelationships needs to be identified, represented, explored, explained, and improved. The increasing use of on-line computer systems, and the development of large-scale storage devices suggests that a large share of future computer systems will be oriented toward the management of very large data bases. The conference addressed these issues and trends, and this volume presents fifteen papers documenting recent progress in the field.