Research issues in database specification

This paper summarizes discussions of a panel on "Type Specifications and Databases" at VLDB in Mexico City. Panel members are listed at the end of the paper.Significant advances have been achieved in software engineering and programming language research in the development of specification techniques. There are important consequences for design, redesign, precision, and analysis of software. The importance of this work to database applications, and indeed data models and data languages, is now becoming apparent. However, specific database issues (e.g., constraints, complex data relationships, shared data, data independence) alter the specification problem as encountered in programming languages. The summary emphasizes the importance of (precise) specification in the database context and relates recent results in both programming languages and databases. It also lists outstanding theoretical problems and the relationship of advances in specification research to the development of semantic data models and high level languages for databases.