Database research and development has been remarkably successful over the past three decades. Now the field is facing new challenges posted by the rapid advances of technology, especially the penetration of the Web and Internet into everyone''s daily life. The economical and financial environment where database systems are used has been changing dramatically. In addition to being able to efficiently manage a large volume of operational data generated internally, the ability to manage data in cyberspace, extract relevant information, and discover knowledge to support decision making is critical to the success of any organization. In order to provide researchers and practitioners with a forum to share their experiences in tackling problems in managing and using data, information, and knowledge in the age of the Internet and Web, the First International Conference on Web-Age Information Management (WAIM 2000) was held in Shanghai, China, June 21-23. The inaugural conference in its series was well received. Researchers from 17 countries and regions, including Austria, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, The Netherlands, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, UK, and USA submitted their recent work. Twenty-seven regular and 14 short papers contained in these proceedings were presented during the two-day conference. These papers cover a large spectrum of issues, from classical data management such as object-oriented modeling, spatial and temporal databases to recent hits like data mining, data warehousing, semi-structured data, and XML.
