From newsletter at databasetheory.org Thu Jul 2 18:19:11 2026 From: newsletter at databasetheory.org (newsletter at databasetheory.org) Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2026 18:19:11 +0000 Subject: [Newsletter PoDM ] Principles of Data Management, Newsletter 62, July 2026 Message-ID: Principles of Data Management, Newsletter 62, July 2026 The newsletter on Principles of Data Management from databasetheory.org TABLE OF CONTENTS Call for Papers: ICDT 2027 Call for Participation: Foundations of Data Management Workshop DB Theory Success: 2026 Alonzo Church Award --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ICDT 2027: 30th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DATABASE THEORY Lille, France, 6-8 April 2027. CALL FOR PAPERS - SUBMISSION ROUND 2 ICDT is a series of international scientific conferences on research of data management theory (https://databasetheory.org/icdt-pages). Since 2009, it is annually and jointly held with EDBT (Extending DB Technology). The 30th edition of ICDT, in 2027, is planned to take place in Lille, France from 6-8 April 2027. * Topics of Interest We welcome research papers on every topic related to the principles and theory of data management, provided that there is a clear connection to foundational aspects. This includes, for example, articles on "classical" data management topics such as the following. - The theoretical investigation of various aspects underlying data management systems (e.g., Indexes, Concurrency and recovery, Distributed and parallel databases, Cloud computing, Privacy and security, Graph databases, Data streams and sketching, Data-centric (business) process management and workflows, Data and knowledge integration and exchange, Data provenance, Views, Data warehouses, Domain-specific databases - multimedia, scientific, spatial, temporal, text data, ...). - The design and study of data models and query languages. - The development and analysis of algorithms for data management. This also includes papers exploring existing or identifying new connections between data management and other areas, such as the areas of: knowledge representation, semantic web, web services, information retrieval and data mining, machine learning and artificial intelligence, distributed computing, and theoretical computer science. In all of the above, a clear emphasis on foundational aspects is expected. You may want to check https://dblp.org/db/conf/icdt/index.html to get an overview of previous editions of ICDT. The Program Committee reserves the right to desk reject a submission when it is regarded to be out of scope. * Submission Cycles and Dates ICDT has two submission cycles for 2027. The upcoming second submission cycle has deadlines as follows. # ICDT Submission Cycle 2 - September 3, 2026:: Abstract submission - September 10, 2026: Paper submission - December 1, 2026: Notification Papers rejected in the first submission cycle cannot be submitted to the second submission cycle unless explicitly requested by the reviewers. * Tracks 1. Regular Research Papers (15 pages, anonymized) The results must be unpublished and not submitted for publication elsewhere, including the proceedings of other symposia or workshops. Papers must be at most 15 pages, excluding references. Additional details may be included in a clearly marked appendix, which, however, will be read at the discretion of the program committee (online appendices are not allowed). Papers not conforming to these requirements may be rejected without further consideration. 2. Database Theory in Action (4 pages, non-anonymized) The "Database Theory in Action" track calls for short papers that illustrate the value and impact of database theory through its application to other domains, or to real-world problems. In particular, papers submitted to this track do not need to include novel theoretical contributions. We specifically invite papers that demonstrate novel and important connections between database theory and neighboring communities, such as Database Systems, Operating Systems, Programming Languages, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Knowledge Representation, Distributed Computing, and Industry, as well as other scientific disciplines outside of Computer Science. At the discretion of the program committee, there may be invited papers to this track as well. Papers submitted to this track must be 4 pages + references, and can be based on a previously published paper at another venue. The title of the papers submitted to this track must start with "Database Theory in Action:". These papers should also include clear pointers to all relevant previous publications, websites, tools, repositories, etc. * Proceedings The conference proceedings will appear in the Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs) series, based at Schloss Dagstuhl. * Detailed submission instructions Please see the full call for papers, available at https://edbticdt2027.github.io/?contents=ICDT_CFP.html for the detailed program committee as well as detailed submission instructions, including the online submission platform, the anonymity requirement, the conflict-of-interest policy, and participation requirement. Note that a paragraph explaining author responsibilities and expectations w.r.t. responsible use of AI has been added to the detailed CFP since round 1. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Foundations of Data Management Workshop Location: Zurich Time: July 27 - 30, 2026 Program: https://www.ifi.uzh.ch/en/dast/events/FDM26-Workshop.html While the workshop will be primarily in person, it will also accommodate online attendance. Researchers interested to attend the talks online should reach out to Dan Olteanu (mailto:olteanu at ifi.uzh.ch). They will receive an email with the zoom link a few days before the start of the workshop. The talks will not be recorded. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2026 ALONZO CHURCH AWARD GOES TO DB THEORETICIANS * The 2026 Alonzo Church Award for Outstanding Contributions to Logic and Computation is presented to Pablo Barcel?, Leonid Libkin, Wim Martens, Juan Reutter, Miguel Romero, Moshe Vardi and Domagoj Vrgo? for laying foundations of logical languages for querying property graphs that found adoption in the SQL and GQL international standards within a decade * Papers: 1. Leonid Libkin, Wim Martens, Domagoj Vrgoc, Querying Graphs with Data, Journal of the ACM, Volume 63, Issue 2, pages 1?53, 2016. 2. Juan Reutter, Miguel Romero, Moshe Vardi, Regular Queries on Graph Databases, Theory of Computing Systems, Volume 61, Issue 1, pages 31?83, 2017. 3. Pablo Barcelo, Leonid Libkin, Juan Reutter, Querying Regular Graph Patterns, Journal of the ACM, Volume 61, Issue 1, pages 1?54, 2014. * Graph databases have risen to a high level of prominence and will play an ever increasing role in data processing tasks. Implemented by industry giants (Oracle, Amazon, Google, SAP, Neo4j), they led to two new ISO standards. One is an extension of the SQL standard called SQL/PGQ enabling SQL to query property graphs. The other is a native graph query language called GQL: the only query language standardized by ISO after SQL. Unlike SQL, whose core is first-order logic, SQL/PGQ and GQL developed in an almost theoretical vacuum. The standard committee looked in the scientific literature for results to guide them, and identified 4 key influences. Two, dating back to the 1980-90s, are about the ubiquitous regular path queries, which fall short of the needs of modern query languages. For this, two key new additions were needed: querying graph topology and data at the same time, and querying complex paths of arbitrary length. These were provided by papers 1 and 2, and their key constructs were incorporated into the new standards. Conference versions of these papers, included in the 4 key influences, received test-of-time awards, acknowledging their role in providing theoretical foundations for new industrial query languages. The third paper addresses a key challenge of compositionality in graph languages. Its main contribution is a compact representation of query results as automata, effectively transforming them into new graph databases. The paper gained significant interest among industry players interested in expanding GQL with graph-to-graph queries, and was recognized by two major awards for the doctoral thesis that formed its basis. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The next issue of this newsletter is scheduled for early September 2026. Please submit your announcements to newsletter-owner at databasetheory.org until August 31, 2026. Please follow the formatting instructions at databasetheory.org/newsletter. Past issues of the newsletter can be found at databasetheory.org/newsletter.