Call for ICDE 2027 Data Engineering Future Technologies (DEFT) Track

We solicit position papers for a special track at the 43rd IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE 2027) to be held during 17-21 May 2027 in Copenhagen (Denmark). The field of databases is rapidly growing simultaneously in several dimensions. New systems with new capabilities and new approaches to data management are being constantly developed. Database technologies and ideas are finding their way into new applications. The field of data science, for which data curation, wrangling, cleaning, etc. are key, is exploding. Over the years, we as a community have adapted our conferences to accommodate and encourage such growth. For instance, the CIDR conference targets early papers that provide a forum to exchange radically new preliminary ideas. Conferences such as VLDB and SIGMOD have created special tracks to promote research in data science and to provide a forum to share experiences dealing with data analysis in diverse application settings.

The objective of the ICDE 2027 Data Engineering Future Technologies (DEFT) Track is to look ahead and provide visions for data engineering and analytics in the near future. The submissions must therefore provide well-articulated problem statement and motivations to set the stage, solution space and possibly some preliminary studies. The papers may be speculative, need not be perfect, but must be thought provoking, with basis in science and technology.

As in previous years, we will have a panel of distinguished special track PC members that consist of senior members of our community (see below). The DEFT track submission offers an opportunity to share your vision of novel challenges faced by future data systems, novel use cases/applications of data management technologies in emerging areas. It also provides a unique opportunity to get feedback on your futuristic research from distinguished senior researchers in our community.

In ICDE 2027, DEFT Track papers will be presented in a plenary session, as was done in ICDE 2023, when the DEFT Track was introduced. A highlight of that session will be the honoring of a highly accomplished senior database researcher. In ICDE 2023, Professor Mike Carey of University of California Irvine was the honoree. In ICDE 2027, the honoree will be Professor Alfons Kemper of Technical University of Munich. That celebration will last 30 minutes and then the DEFT Track papers will be presented.

Papers of Interest for the DEFT Track

We welcome submissions in the following two categories. The categories listed below are not intended to be exhaustive. Papers that do not necessarily fall into one of these two categories will also be considered. However, papers that are more suitable for the regular research, and industry and application tracks should NOT be submitted here. Such papers are highly likely to be desk rejected.

Restrictions and Guidelines

Submission Length: 6-12 pages, double column, IEEE format. It is recommended that papers be closer to 6 pages than the maximum limit of 12 (not including the references).

Number of Submissions: Each person can be a lead author or a co-author of only ONE submission. Submissions in violation of this restriction will be desk rejected.

Submissions from DEFT Track PC: We encourage members of the DEFT Track PC to consider submitting papers as well. Since the DEFT Track PC list is small, to maintain anonymity of reviews further, for papers co-authored by DEFT Track PC members, we may seek reviewers from the regular PC.

Submissions should be done via the Microsoft CMT website at the following link: https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/ICDE2027/Submission/Index by making the choice “Data Engineering Future Technologies (DEFT) Track”.

Important Dates: ICDE 2027 DEFT track will have only one round of submissions. All deadlines are 11:59 PM Anywhere on Earth (AoE). Abstracts must be submitted a week before full papers are due so that PC members can bid for papers that they would like to review. Full papers cannot be submitted if the abstracts aren't submitted in time!