DIMACS Workshop on Distributed Data and Structures
May 10 - 11, 1999
Princeton University, Computer Science Department, Princeton, NJ
- Organizers:
- Yuri Breitbart, Lucent Technologies, Bell Labs, yuri@research.bell-labs.com
- Sajal Das, University of North Texas, Denton, das@cs.unt.edu
- Nicola Santoro, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, nicola.santoro@carleton.ca
- Peter Widmayer, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, widmayer@inf.ethz.ch
Presented under the auspices of the DIMACS Special Year on Massive Data Sets.
Currently, the research on distributed data structures is
carried out in many fields, from parallel systems to distributed
computing, from AI to GIS. Their systematic design and analysis
has just started: in the database literature, dynamic file
structures for distributed object management have attracted some
attention, and in the algorithms literature, data structures have
been studied from a complexity oriented point of view. However,
this research is mostly "hidden", relegated to the side of each
field, obscured by the weight of the application domain,
especially in databases but also in the algorithms community.
In fact, there is not even a definitive acceptance of its
existence as a research field. This is surprising, especially
in the light of the following two important developments.
As databases are growing steadily, applications become more
and more demanding, and distributed computer systems are becoming
rather easily available, the problem of how to efficiently maintain
large datasets gains importance. An important aspect of this problem
is the design, implementation, and operation of a data structure in
a distributed system.
At the same time, in the constantly expanding net-centric universe,
an increasing amount of data is available, distributed among sites.
The structuring of the data for accessing, manipulation and
processing is a crucial task which can ultimately affect the
performance, integrity and usefulness of the entire system.
These two developments bring the research on distributed data
and structures at the forefront. The absence of a specific focus
on this subject is an anomaly in the status of the current research
efforts; at the same time, this situation opens an exceptional
opportunity for researchers.
This workshop is intended to bring together application oriented
developers and theoretical researchers concerned with the
maintenance of distributed data and the organization of the
interaction between the computing nodes. Topics of interest
include, but are not limited to:
- design, implementation and operation of distributed data structures in general
- measures of efficiency for distributed data structures
- complexity analysis (lower and upper bounds) for distributed data structures
- particular data maintenance problems (distributed token; mutual exclusion; counter)
- connection between distributed data maintenance and mobile data maintenance
- connection between the interaction structure of the nodes and the data maintenance
- experience with distributed data structures on current systems
A limited number of travel support grants are available.
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Document last modified on April 6, 1999.