The Cambridge Report on Database Research
On October 19 and 20, 2023, the authors of this report convened in Cambridge, MA, to discuss the state of the database research field, its recent accomplishments and ongoing challenges, and future directions for research and community engagement. This gathering continues a long standing tradition in the database community, dating back to the late 1980s, in which researchers meet roughly every five years to produce a forward looking report. This report summarizes the key takeaways from our discussions. We begin with a retrospective on the academic, open source, and commercial successes of the community over the past five years. We then turn to future opportunities, with a focus on core data systems, particularly in the context of cloud computing and emerging hardware, as well as on the growing impact of data science, data governance, and generative AI. This document is not intended as an exhaustive survey of all technical challenges or industry innovations in the field. Rather, it reflects the perspectives of senior community members on the most pressing challenges and promising opportunities ahead.
Authors
- Shiv Venkataraman
- Renée J. Miller (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1484-4787)
- Danica Porobic (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-4943-1530)
- Surajit Chaudhuri (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8252-5270)
- Michael Cafarella (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6122-0590)
- Viktor Sanca (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4799-8467)
- Donald Kossman
- Dan Suciu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4144-0868)
- Ippokratis Pandis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-6491-1678)
- Magdalena Bałazińska (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6805-0325)
- Alon Halevy (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8717-7356)
- Guoliang Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1601-6640)
- Aditya Parameswaran
- Philip A. Bernstein (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5781-1558)
- Stanley B. Zdonik
- Beng Chin Ooi
- Julia Stoyanovich
- Volker Markl
- Stratos Idreos
- Peter Boncz
- Xin Luna Dong
- Sihem Amer-Yahia
- Mark D. Hill
- Michael Franklin
- Yannis Ioannidis
- Susan Davidson
- Gustavo Alonso
- Anatasia Ailamaki
- Juliana Freire
- Michael Stonebraker
- Fatma Ozcan
- Johannes Gehrke
- Yanlei Diao
- Wang-Chiew Tan
- Thomas Neumann
- Jignesh M. Patel
- Joseph M. Hellerstein
- Christoph Koch
- David DeWitt
- Daniel Abadi
- Arun R. K. Kumar
- Matel Zaharia
- C. Krishna Mohan
Publication Details
- Journal
- Repository for Publications and Research Data (ETH Zurich)
- Published
- 2025-04-15
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-c-000791805
- Primary Topic
- Big Data and Business Intelligence
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00