This volume contains the proceedings of the 15th British National Conference on
Databases held at Birkbeck College, London, in July 1997. The College has played a
major role in database research since the early 1970s, and it is altogether fitting that
the conference should at last be held at Birkbeck.
The changes in the area of databases that have occurred since the conference was first
held in 1980 have been phenomenal. Databases are now ubiquitous, ranging from PC
databases which sit atop almost every desktop, through data warehouses, to the vast,
heterogeneous, unstructured "database" which comprises the Internet. One of the key
unresolved questions is how the wealth of information within the Internet can be
integrated and exploited. Our invited speaker, Larry Kerschberg, considers exactly
this problem. In his keynote paper he proposes the use of co-operating intelligent
agents called "knowledge rovers", which can be configured to seek out, retrieve and
integrate data and knowledge that is specific to their mission.