Recent Progress on Selected Topics in Database Research ---A Report by Nine Young Chinese Researchers Working in the United States

The study on database technologies, or more generally, the technologiesof data and information management, is an important and active researchfield. Recently, many exciting results have been reported. In this fastgrowing field, Chinese researchers play more and more active roles.Research papers from Chinese scholars, both in China and abroad, appearin prestigious academic forums.In this paper, we, nine young Chinese researchers working in the UnitedStates, present concise surveys and report our recent progress on theselected fields that we are working on. Although the paper covers only asmall number of topics and the selection of the topics is far frombalanced, we hope that such an effort would attract more and moreresearchers, especially those in China, to enter the frontiers ofdatabase research and promote collaborations. For the obvious reason, theauthors are listed alphabetically, while the sections are arranged inthe order of the author list.