The book covers the recent advances in web technologies and applications such as web data management, web information integration, web services, web data warehousing and web data mining, which rapidly changed our life in various ways.

This Switzerland-Japan Joint Seminar on Multimedia and Databases was held to achieve at least three goals. First, it enabled us to present and discuss our recent research results and exchange our ideas for further promotion of science and technology. The second goal was to establish a friendly relationship between the Swiss and the Japanese. The last, but not least, aim was to disseminate information about our plans by publishing the proceedings of this seminar. We thought that publishing the outcome of the seminar would be essential in order not to store the treasure — the seminar results — secretly.

This volume is a progress report on the project Research and Development of Advanced Database Systems for Integration of Media and User Environments, supported by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture of Japan. It investigates research on new database systems due to the recent development of network technology; a clearer picture of integration by database technology is drawn as a result.

This volume contains technical papers and panel position papers selected from the proceedings of the International Symposium on Information Systems and Technologies for Network Society, held together with the IPSJ (information processing society of Japan) National Convention, in September 1997. Papers were submitted from all over the world, especially from Japan, Korea and China. Since these countries are believed to form one of the major computer manufacturing centers in the world, a panel on “Computer Science Education for the 21st Century” was set up. A special session on the Japanese project on Software Engineering invited representative researchers from the project, which is supported by the Ministry of Education, Japan.

The book covers the recent advances in web technologies and applications such as web data management, web information integration, web services, web data warehousing and web data mining, which rapidly changed our life in various ways.

This Switzerland-Japan Joint Seminar on Multimedia and Databases was held to achieve at least three goals. First, it enabled us to present and discuss our recent research results and exchange our ideas for further promotion of science and technology. The second goal was to establish a friendly relationship between the Swiss and the Japanese. The last, but not least, aim was to disseminate information about our plans by publishing the proceedings of this seminar. We thought that publishing the outcome of the seminar would be essential in order not to store the treasure — the seminar results — secretly.

This volume is a progress report on the project Research and Development of Advanced Database Systems for Integration of Media and User Environments, supported by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture of Japan. It investigates research on new database systems due to the recent development of network technology; a clearer picture of integration by database technology is drawn as a result.

This volume contains technical papers and panel position papers selected from the proceedings of the International Symposium on Information Systems and Technologies for Network Society, held together with the IPSJ (information processing society of Japan) National Convention, in September 1997. Papers were submitted from all over the world, especially from Japan, Korea and China. Since these countries are believed to form one of the major computer manufacturing centers in the world, a panel on “Computer Science Education for the 21st Century” was set up. A special session on the Japanese project on Software Engineering invited representative researchers from the project, which is supported by the Ministry of Education, Japan.