A Summary of the NSF Scientific Database Workshop

request to the contrary. Technical papers are unre fereed. can be informaly defined as a database management system able to model, store and manipulate data in a manner suitable for the needs of statisticians and to apply statistical data analysis techniques to the stored data. builders, working in this specific area of activity, to discuss the particular issues of interest, to propose new solutions to problems, and to extend the themes of the previous conferences, both from the theoretical and the application point of view. The papers presented during the conference cover a wide area of research for statistical and scientific databases: object oriented database systems, semantic modelling, deductive mathematical databases, security of statistical databases, implementational issues for scientific databases, temporal summary table management, graphical and visual interfaces for statistical databases, query optimization, dis tributed databases, and economic and geographical databases. In addition to traditional topics new topics of growing importance emerged. These include statistical expert systems, object oriented user interface, geographical databases, scientific databases for human genome project. This special issue contains short versions of some of the papers presented at the conference. These papers reflect the diversity of approaches used to solve considered problems. group concluded (Recommendation 5) " that encouragement should be given to an organisation ...] to coordinate centrally the monitoring of small area statistics around major installations producing discharges that might present a carcinogenic or mutagenic hazard to the public. " Subsequent events have underlined the importance of this conclusion, as other reports have arisen of possible excesses of malignancies near nuclear installations. There are also analogous — and more numerous questions concerning contamination of the environment by industrial chemicals, effluents, and smoke. These too call for a similar system to provide ready access to the health statistics of defined local areas, and means for interpreting them. The need applies primarily but not exclusively to cancers, and it applies to all ages. In many situations the statistical requirements for the storage and retrieval of data with a geographical component can be met efficiently by using a hierarchical organisation, which is easily implemented within the standard relational model. What you miss compared with a GIS is the direct representation of physical structures and the considerable emphasis on the production of maps as output. The very small postcode areas can be used as building blocks for larger (aggregate) areas. Since all our areas of interest contain at …