Guest Editors’ message

The 2006 VLDB Conference in Seoul, Korea, was another very successful instance of a VLDB conference and also one that set several new records. The Program Committee received a record number of submissions in all its tracks: 334 papers in the core track, 292 in the information infrastructure track, and 59 in the industry and applications track. To put these data into perspective, VLDB 2006 got 300 more submissions in total than any of the conferences in the 1990s and between 200 and 300 more papers than the previous conferences in the new millennium. Attendance at the conference reached a new all time high with 685 registered attendees. As PC Track Chairs, we worked hard to ensure that all papers were treated fairly. We wanted the final program to be the strongest possible, covering the exciting new areas as well as the more traditional, reflecting the best research work submitted to the conference. With the high number of submissions, the Program Committee had a huge task in selecting the papers to be accepted to the conference. The reviewing task is a difficult one with tight deadlines and a large number of papers must be thoroughly examined, understood, and written about. We want to thank our Program Committee members for their efforts in making VLDB’06 such a successful conference.