Parallel and Distributed Databases: Introduction

Euro-Par Topic 5 addresses data management issues in parallel and distributed computing. Advances in data management (storage, access, querying, retrieval, mining) are inherent to current and future information systems. Today, accessing large volumes of information is a reality: Data-intensive applications enable huge user communities to transparently access multiple pre-existing autonomous, distributed and heterogeneous resources (data, documents, images, services, etc.). Data management solutions need efficient techniques for exploiting and mining large datasets available in clusters, peer to peer and Grid architectures. Parallel and distributed file systems, databases, data warehouses, and digital libraries are a key element for achieving scalable, efficient systems that will cost-effectively manage and extract data from huge amounts of highly distributed and heterogeneous digital data repositories. Each paper submitted to Euro-Par’s topic Parallel and Distributed Databases was reviewed by at least three reviewers. Of 11 papers submitted to the topic this year, 3 were accepted, which makes an acceptance rate of 27 %. The three accepted papers discuss diverse issues: database transactions, efficient and reliable structured peer-to-peer systems, and selective replicated declustering