Trends in Database Research

Abstract

Research in databases has played a vital role in developing information system technology and also the outcome of this research has been very successful resulting in great potential for industry. The database industry is generating billions of dollars of business annually. It has estimated that the database industry itself has generated $42 billion revenue in 2000 and this market is growing at 11% annually. In the software industry, it is second only to operating system software. The evolution of database systems started in late 60's when hierarchical and network data models were developed, but these models did not get much momentum because they were not suited for complex applications [9]. In early 70's, Ted Codd proposed a relational data model (for which he was awarded a Turing award) which became the backbone of developing database applications. Although this model was criticized by COBOL/CODASYL group people, it became very popular because of its simplicity. In late 70's and early 80's most of the research work was focused on developing fundamentals of relational database theory, query languages, transaction management and query optimization. In late 80's and early 90's, the database research community grew exponentially and made several breakthrough in many areas like object-oriented, active, deductive, and parallel and distributed databases. The research ideas in these areas have been implemented successfully in different database vendors' products. In early 90's, most of the businesses realize that their business is becoming very competitive and they need some sophisticated tools that can analyze their business data, customers profiles and product information so that they can improve their marketing strategy and management of organization. Data mining and data warehousing technology was developed for satisfying such needs [1].