Future Data Management: “It’s Nothing Business; It’s Just Personal.”

Conventional data management occurs primarily in centralized servers or in well-interconnected distributed systems. These are removed from their end users, who interact with the systems mostly through static devices to obtain generic services around main-stream applications: banking, retail, business management, etc. Several recent advances in technologies, however, give rise to a new breed of applications, which change altogether the user experience and sense of data management. Very soon several such systems will be in our pockets, many more in our homes, the kitchen appliances, our clothes, etc. How would these systems operate? Many system and user aspects must be approached in novel ways, while several new issues come up and need to be addressed for the first time. Highlights include personalization, privacy, information trading, annotation, new interaction devices and corresponding interfaces, visualization, etc. In this talk, we take a close look at and give a very personal guided tour to this emerging world of data management, offering some thoughts on how the new technical challenges might be approached.