Advances in database technology

The series of International Conferences on Extending Database Technology (EDBT) is an established and prestigious forum for the exchange of the latest research results in data management. It provides unique opportunities for database researchers, practitioners, developers, and users to explore new ideas, techniques, and tools, and to exchange experiences. This volume contains the proceedings of the 10th EDBT Conference, held in Munich, Germany, March 27-29, 2006. The conference included 3 keynote talks, 56 full-size and 4 half-size research papers in 20 sessions, 8 industrial presentations in 3 sessions, 1 panel session, 5 tutorials in 7 sessions, and 20 demonstrations in 4 sessions. All of the research papers as well as papers and abstracts from most of the other sessions are included here. Distinguished members of the database and information-retrieval communities delivered the three keynotes, which were all in the spirit of the banner theme chosen for EDBT 2006: “From Database Systems to Universal Data Management. ” Martin Kersten, a pioneer in the area of database support for ambient application environments and the investigator of several kernel database architectures, discussed various hard issues that arise in organic database systems, i. e. , systems that can be embedded in several hardware applications and have autonomic behavior. Alan Smeaton, a leader in content-based retrieval of information in a wide variety of media, introduced us to the world of digital video libraries and challenged us with several open problems associated with their effective management.