Research directions for principles of data management (abridged)

A community of researchers working in the area of Principles of Data Management (PDM) joined in a workshop at the Dagstuhl Castle in Germany in April 2016. The workshop was organized jointly by the Executive Committee of the ACM Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (PODS) and the Council of the International Conference on Database Theory (ICDT). PDM played a foundational role in the relational database model, with the robust connection between algebraic and calculus-based query languages, the connection between integrity constraints and database design, key insights for the field of query, optimization, and the fundamentals of consistent concurrent transactions. The Dagstuhl workshop highlighted two important trends that have been accelerating in the PDM community over the past several years. The first is the increasing embrace of neighboring disciplines, including especially Machine Learning, Statistics, Probability, and Verification, both to help resolve new challenges, and to bring new perspectives to them. The second is the increased focus on obtaining positive results that enable the use of mathematically based insights in practical settings. The centrality of data management across numerous application areas is an opportunity both for PDM researchers to embrace techniques and perspectives from adjoining research areas, and for researchers from other areas to incorporate techniques and perspectives from PDM.