The Web has democratized and revolutionized computing in the last 10 years. Acting as a universal communications mechanism, it has let anyone talk to anyone (for example via email, IM and voip), anyone talk to any application (the Web), anyone talk to some very limited forms of information (Blogs/RSS), any application talk to anyone (Spam), and any application talk to any other application (Web Services).

Web based application developers are attempting to move towards Web services as a mechanism for developing component based Web applications. Unfortunately, traditional tools and development models are inadequately architected to meet the rapidly evolving needs for the future of scalable Web services. Today's Web services development model is mired with complexity as traditional tools and technologies, focused on client-server application development, are ill suited. The author examines the challenges of today's Web service development model.

This panel will examine the implications of the XML revolution, which is currently raging on the web, for database systems research and development.

Data analysis applications typically aggregate data across many dimensions looking for unusual patterns. The SQL aggregate functions and the GROUP BY operator produce zero-dimensional or one-dimensional answers. Applications need the N-dimensional generalization of these operators. The paper defines that operator, called the data cube or simply cube. The cube operator generalizes the histogram, cross-tabulation, roll-up, drill-down, and sub-total constructs found in most report writers. The cube treats each of the N aggregation attributes as a dimension of N-space. The aggregate of a particular set of attribute values is a point in this space. The set of points forms an N-dimensionaI cube. Super-aggregates are computed by aggregating the N-cube to lower dimensional spaces. Aggregation points are represented by an "infinite value": ALL, so the point (ALL,ALL,...,ALL, sum(*)) represents the global sum of all items. Each ALL value actually represents the set of values contributing to that aggregation.