SOFSEM 2004

                       SOFSEM 2004 -- FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT 
                        AND PRELIMINARY CALL FOR PAPERS  
                                                   
                Anniversary XXX-th Conference on Current Trends 
                     in Theory and Practice of Informatics

             January 24 - 30, 2004, Hotel VZ MERIN, Czech Republic

                         http://www.cs.cas.cz/sofsem

                 (Paper submission deadline: August 25, 2003)

SOFSEM (SOFtware SEMinar) is an annual five-day international conference
devoted to the theory and practice of Computer Science. 
Its aim is to foster co-operation among professionals from academia 
and industry working in various areas of Computer Science. 
The program consists of a series of Invited Talks, given by prominent 
professionals and researchers, Contributed Talks selected by the Program 
Committee from submitted papers, Workshop Sessions discussing 
work-in-progress, and the Student Research Forum.
 
SOFSEM offers a unique opportunity to quickly obtain a representative
overview of the areas of Computer Science that are selected as the 
topics of the year. 
The conference provides an ideal framework for discussions and meetings, 
for establishing personal contacts, and for socializing. 
SOFSEM is especially suited for young computer scientists. 
The working language is English.
                                     
The 30th Anniversary SOFSEM 2004 will be organized in four parallel 
tracks, each track focused on a selected Computer Science area:

   - Computer Science Theory (Track Chair: Peter Van Emde Boas)
   - Database Technologies (Track Chair: Jaroslav Pokorny)
   - Cognitive Technologies (Track Chair: Peter Sincak)
   - Web Technologies (Track Chair: Julius Stuller)

To avoid excess diversity among the conference participants and foster 
the atmosphere of close professional interaction, more detailed topics will
be announced shortly for each track. The Program Committee will especially 
solicit original and unpublished papers on the focused topics.

An integral part of the SOFSEM 2004 will be Student Research Forum organized 
with the aim to publish and discuss students' projects in the field of theory 
and practice of Computer Science.

The SOFSEM Proceedings, containing both the Invited and the Contributed papers 
(mainly on the above mentioned 4 areas), will be published by  
Springer-Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series (LNCS) 
and distributed at the conference.
Papers describing "work-in-progress" and Student Research Forum papers 
will be published in local proceedings.
Selected papers from the local proceedings are also planned to appear 
in a special issue of the ENTCS journal, published by Elsevier.
                                
Invited Talks
-------------
 Computer Science Theory 
    Hendrik Jacob (Jaap) van den Herik (title to be announced later)

 Database Technologies 
    Federica Mandreoli (title to be announced later)
    Pavel Zezula: "Unordered XML Pattern Matching with Tree Signatures"

 Web Technologies 
    Michael Schroeder: "Rules and the Semantic Web" 
    Dimitris Plexousakis: "Querying the Semantic Web: an RDF-based perspective" 

Conference Topics
-----------------
  - Computer Science Theory Track: 
      Computation Theory 
      Complexity Theory 
      Algorithms 
      Data Structures 
      Computational Geometry 
      Distributed Computing 
      Logic 
      Semantics 
      Automata, Languages and Grammars 
      Foundations of Object Technology 
      Foundations of Artificial Intelligence 
      Agent Theory 
      Games 
      Nature Based Computational Models 
      Learning Theory 

  - Database Technologies Track: 
      XML and Databases 
        Access Methods 
        Indexing XML Data 
        Advanced Querying: Approximate and Similarity Queries 
        XML Query Languages 
        XML Query Processing 
        Benchmarking XML Databases 
      Text and Document Databases 
        Information Filtering and Summarization 
        Text Data Mining 
        Search Strategies 
        Digital Libraries 
        New Text Models 

    - Web Technologies Track:
       Infrastructure for the Semantic Web 
       Semantic Web Technologies for Service Description and Discovery 
       Business Semantic, Metadata, and Ontologies 
       Mobile Services 
       Agent Technologies 
       Workflow Technologies 
       Security and Trust Issues 
       Warehousing Web Data 
       Mining, Exploring, and Visualizing the Web 
       Methodologies and Tools for Web Data Publishing 
       Distributed Computing and Transactions on the Web 
       Fundamental Issues 

Important Dates (for all kinds of submissions): 
-----------------------------------------------
  Submission deadlines: 
    Abstracts:                                         August 18, 2003 
    Full papers:                                       August 25, 2003
  Notification of acceptance:                          October 5, 2003
  Final papers due (camera ready, LaTeX, llncs style): October 20, 2003

Location
--------
  The Hotel VZ MERIN is located about 60 km in the South of Prague on the right 
  shore of Slapska prehrada (see Sofsem web page http://www.cs.cas.cz/sofsem
  for more details). 

Organizers
----------
  The 30 th Anniversary SOFSEM 2004 is organized by
  - Charles University, Prague
  - Czech Society for Computer Science
  - Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, Brno
  - Institute of Computer Science, Masaryk University, Brno
  - Institute of Computer Science, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 
    Prague  
  - Action M Agency, Prague

  in co-operation with the Slovak Society for Computer Science.

General Conference Chair 
------------------------
  Peter Van Emde Boas (University of Amsterdam, Nederlands) 

Program Committee Co-Chairs
---------------------------
  Jaroslav Pokorny, Co-Chair (Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic)
  Peter Sincak, Co-Chair (Technical University, Kosice, Slovakia)
  Julius Stuller, Co-Chair (Institute of Computer Science, Prague, CZ)

Program Committee Members 
-------------------------
  Witold Abramowicz (Poznan University of Economics, Poland) 
  Maria Bielikova (Slovak University of Technology, Bratislava, Slovakia)
  Dario Floreano (EPFL Swiss)   
  Shuji Hashimoto (Waseda university/Humanoid Institute, Tokyo, Japan)
  Juraj Hromkovic (Aachen, Germany)
  Leonid Kalinichenko (Institute for Problems of Informatics, Russia)
  Vladimir Kvasnicka (Slovakia) 
  Roman Neruda (Institute of Computer Science, Prague, Czech Republic) 
  Dimitris Plexousakis (Univeristy of Crete, Greece) 
  Michael Schroeder (City University, London, United Kingdom)  
  Vaclav Snasel (VSB-TU Ostrava, Czech Republic)
  Gerard Tel (Utrecht, Nederlands) 
  
Organizing Committee
--------------------
  Chair: Julius Stuller (Institute of Computer Science, Prague, CZ)
  
General contact address
-----------------------
  Institute of Computer Science 
  Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
  Julius Stuller, SOFSEM
  Pod Vodarenskou vezi 2
  182 07 Prague 8
  Czech Republic
  e-mail: sofsem-Rr6x4/To+galVyrhU4qvOw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  phone:  +420 266 053 200
  fax:    +420 286 585 789 

Local arragements address (Registration, Accomodation)
------------------------------------------------------
  Action M Agency
  Milena Zeithamlova, SOFSEM
  Vrsovicka 68
  101 00 Prague 10
  Czech Republic
  e-mail: actionm-Rr6x4/To+galVyrhU4qvOw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  phone:  +420 267 312 333
  fax:    +420 267 310 503 

Registration
------------
Deadline 
for Early Payment:  November 24, 2003
Fees and Forms:     see http://www.cs.cas.cz/sofsem

Note
----
Those of you who became used to the traditional late autumn term of 
SOFSEM, please note that the conference has been moved to the 
beginning of the next year. This change has been introduced in an 
attempt to resolve conflicts with work obligations for the participants. 
We hope you will find the new term more suitable.

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