During the week of March 04 - 08, 1996, the Seminar on New Trends in Database Languages was organized by Anthony J. Bonner (University of Toronto, Canada), Andreas Heuer (University of Rostock, Germany), and Letizia Tanca (University of Verona, Italy). Participants came from Universities or Research Centers from Belgium (4), Canada (2), Germany (15), Great Britain (1), Italy (4), Switzerland (1), The Netherlands (2), and USA (2).

Altogether 22 lectures and 2 working groups covered various aspects of new trends in database languages. Areas of particular interest were foundations of database languages and extensions of the standard languages.

The participants appreciated the outstanding local organization and the environment including all Dagstuhl facilities which enabled a successful workshop.

In relational database systems, SQL has become the accepted standard as a general database language for data definition, queries, updates, and database programming (in its embedded version). More recently, several new directions for database languages have been developed

• for the specification and design of database applications,
• for more complex queries than expressible in standard SQL,
• for deeply structured and long transactions,
• for a seamless integration of database operations and application programs,
• for the use with new database models like object-oriented ones.

These new directions are especially motivated by new and more-complex applications like CAD, CAM, CASE, office automation, and scientific databases.

These trends lead to

• newer versions of SQL like SQL3 and Object SQL (OQL),
• deductive approaches to database querying like rule-based languages or database logics,
• rule-based approaches for active database applications,
• transaction languages or models for different data models,
• special-purpose specification languages,
• integrated database programming languages,
• object-oriented calculi, algebras, or programming languages with persistence.

The workshop was to bring together researchers working on foundations of database languages, especially for the relational and object-oriented database models, and researchers developing extensions of the standard languages like DATALOG and SQL, among them projects like object logic (F-Logic) or extended SQLs (SQL3, Object SQL or OQL).

The discussions at the workshop aimed to result in a deeper understanding of the forthcoming developments in the database language area and the usefulness of fundamental results in complex applications. There were special sessions on developing canonical examples for advanced applications of database languages, which captured the essence of an advanced application and reported about advanced applications showing the usefulness and problems of new database languages.