Hi all,

It was suggested at the xldb workshop that we should
improve collaboration between science and db research
communities, in particular, we should try to organize
a working group & a mini-workshop with representatives
from different sciences and db research community to
discuss a common set of database-related requirements
and primitives that scientists need from next-generation
DBMS with the goals of stimulating database research
and eventually producing standardized benchmarks.

We know from Mike's blog
http://www.databasecolumn.com/2007/11/databases-for-big-science.html
that the research community is still interested (great!),
and I think science is interested too, so let's make it
happen.

I suggest we organize a _small_, focused mini-workshop
with representatives from
  - astronomy (2-3)
  - HEP (2-3)
  - biology/medicine/neuro-science (2-3)
  - earth science (1)
  - db research (4-6)
  - plus KT and myself (organizers).
That would be < 20 total.

I do remember it was mentioned at the XLDB we might want
to invite few selected vendors to this meeting, could
someone explain what the thinking behind it was? I imagine
if we pick some (true) db researchers that happen to work
for a database vendor that might work well (maybe
Guy Lohman? Who else?), but otherwise I think for the
sake of keeping the meeting small and focused I'd be
tempted to leave the vendors out this time (sorry!).

I know astronomy and HEP communities relatively well,
and I thought about inviting:
  - Robert Lupton, Alex Szalay and Kirk Borne (astro)
  - Dirk Duellmann, David Quarrie (hep)
I will need help with identifying solid representatives
from the remaining sciences, I'm counting on Nagiza (ORNL),
Celeste (LLNL) and others to help us.

We'll expect science representatives to prepare white
papers in advance of the mini-workshop based on input
and materials from their colleagues describing prioritized
features and primitives her/his community would like
to see in a next-generation DBMS. These white papers
will serve as the basis for the workshop discussions.

To kick off this process, we have prepared a draft
list of potential common requirements:

http://xldb.slac.stanford.edu/display/XLDB/Common+Requirements

We encourage everybody from science to add to it or
attach comments.

We are proposing to meet late April or early May in
Asilomar (as discussed at XLDB), and we believe a
2 day meeting would be most productive.

Mike, David: I know you've organized many meetings and
conferences at Asilomar, can we count on your help with
arranging the logistics with Asilomar?

And finally, given how severely the budget of entire
science was hit this year, it would tremendously help
if we would have some sponsors to offset the costs.
Given we are not planning to have representatives from
industry and vendors, I'm not sure what is the best
way to attract sponsors.

Anyway, please send feedbacks, comments and suggestions
either to me or to the entire list.

thanks,
Jacek and KT

-- 
Jacek Becla
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
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+1 650 926 8664