A communiqué from Akmal B. Chaudhri announces a call for papers in connection with the OOPSLA 2001 Workshop on 'Objects, <XML> and Databases', to be held October 14/15, 2001 in Tampa Bay, Florida. The workshop will be hosted in conjunction with the OOPSLA 2001 Conference (ACM Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications). Topics of interest for the workshop include "the use, management and delivery of XML, web and semi-structured data using object technology and database systems; for example, the efficient storage, retrieval and querying of XML from database systems, application and database evolution issues relating to changes in structure of XML documents, case studies or experience reports, benchmarks and performance, early adopter experiences, standards issues, etc. The goal is to bring together academics, practitioners, users and vendors to discuss the use and synergy between Objects, XML and Databases. Many commercial systems built today are increasingly using these technologies together and it is important to understand the various research and practical issues. The wide range of participants will help the various communities understand both specific and common problems... For many organizations already using object-orientation with database management systems, XML data adds a new dimension that brings considerable flexibility and promise, but also adds new uncertainties and issues as to how to effectively manage that data. The recent trend towards XML servers, native XML databases and support for XML in existing relational databases is a testimony to the importance of this issue for the vendor community as well."

"The workshop format will be 20-minute presentations, followed by a 10-minute discussion/debate led by one of the workshop organizers. We also hope to have one or two invited keynote sessions from distinguished experts. In addition, we will encourage demos or other novel presentation techniques if they are a better format to describe the work being undertaken. A round table discussion will take place at the end of the workshop to try and draw various threads together, discuss any open issues, conclusions and bring the workshop to a close. This format has worked very successfully for several previous OOPSLA workshops."