Editorial to the special issue: “Trends and advances in database systems research”

Abstract

The BTW conference, organized by the Fachbereich Datenbanken und Informationssysteme (DBIS) of the Gesellschaft fur Informatik—GI (German Computer Society), is addressing all subjects in the areas of databases and information systems. It constitutes the central forum of the database communities in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, where not only scientists but also practitioners and users present their latest results in research and development and exchange information on many topics of database and information technology. The bi-annual BTW started as a conference series for “Datenbanksysteme in Buro, Technik und Wissenschaft” in 1985; at that time, database technology was evolving from its prior focus on storing and maintaining conventional business data towards so-called non-standard database applications which included applications in office automation, engineering, and scientific data management (which explains the German title and also the acronym). Several years ago, it was renamed to reflect the current focus of database management and now stands for “Database Systems for Business, Technology, and Web”. The 14th BTW conference (BTW 2011) took place from February 28th to March 4th, 2011 at the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany. A particular focus of this Technical University is on information technology—backed by several research institutes such as the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE), the Institute