Information and Data Management for NoSQL Databases

Dear Colleagues,

NoSQL (Not only SQL) databases are becoming more and more adopted in many application contexts. They can be considered as the natural evolution of classical relational databases towards managing semi-structured data represented by means of complex data formats in a structured and robust way. Typical formats are XML, JSON and graph data, for which different sub-types of NoSQL DBMS are now available. Relational and non-relational data could also be managed in an integrated way, all together, by polystore systems.

Many issues around information and data management are present in NoSQL databases. They could be divided into two main groups: (1) the robust management of stored data and (2) querying and retrieving data. The first group of issues concerns data integrity, transactional models and constraints on data structures; the second group of issues concerns the capability of easily querying and retrieving data in a simple and/or flexible way. Furthermore, imprecision, uncertainty and vagueness could also be considered, for example, by applying fuzzy-set theory in various manners. Nonetheless, managing the time dimension and performing temporal reasoning, as well as managing the provenance of data in NoSQL databases, are now recognized as key issues to be addressed.

The Special Issue welcomes papers that cover any issue concerning information and data management in NoSQL databases, so as to asses (either explicitly or implicitly) the current state of the art of this crucial topic for research on data management.

Papers could be focused on some of the following topics, but not necessarily limited to them:

• XML databases;
• JSON databases;
• Graph databases;
• Image and movie databases;
• Polystore systems;
• Integrity constraints;
• Transactional models;
• Schema vs. Schemaless data;
• Query languages;
• User interfaces;
• Information retrieval;
• Soft querying and fuzzy sets in NoSQL databases;
• Time dimension and temporal reasoning/querying in NoSQL databases;
• Provenance in NoSQL databases.

Prof. Dr. Giuseppe Psaila
Dr. Paolo Fosci
Guest Editors

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• data models, integrity constraints and transactional models for NoSQL databases
• querying and information retrieval in NoSQL databases
• soft approaches to data models and information retrieval in NoSQL databases