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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 [log in to unmask] +1 650 926 8664