2nd International Workshop on Similarity Search and Applications (SISAP 2009)

http://www.sisap.org/2009

August 29 - 30, 2009
Prague, Czech Republic

BACKGROUND:

The International Workshop on Similarity Search and Applications
(SISAP) is a conference devoted to similarity searching, with emphasis
on metric space searching. It aims to fill in the gap left by the
various scientific venues devoted to similarity searching in spaces
with coordinates, by providing a common forum for theoreticians and
practitioners around the problem of similarity searching in general
spaces (metric and non-metric) or using distance-based (as opposed to
coordinate-based) techniques in general.

SISAP aims to become an ideal forum to exchange real-world,
challenging and exciting examples of applications, new indexing
techniques, common testbeds and benchmarks, source code, and
up-to-date literature through a Web page serving the similarity
searching community. Authors are expected to use the testbeds and code
from the SISAP Web site for comparing new applications, databases,
indexes and algorithms.

After the very successful first event in Cancun, Mexico in 2008, the
second SISAP will be held in Prague, Czech Republic, on August 29-30,
2009.

CALL FOR PAPERS:

Authors are encouraged to submit previously unpublished papers on
their research in similarity search and applications. The proceedings
of SISAP 2009 will be published by IEEE Computer Society Press. A
special issue with the extended versions of the best SISAP 2009 papers
will appear in an internationally recognized journal (subject to
additional reviewing).
Contributions to the conference should fall into the following categories:

Full papers:
- Basic techniques: general methods that apply to arbitrary metric
spaces, nonmetric or (dis)similarity spaces, or high-dimensional
vector spaces. We strongly encourage that those be accompanied with an
open-source implementation conforming the interface of the Web site
and to be tested with a relevant subset of the spaces included in the
Web site. This will favor uniform comparison and also permit comparing
the technique with future developments.
- Applied techniques: methods that apply to specific similarity search
problems. Those papers are also encouraged to contribute with the code
and, especially, with the similarity computation function and the
datasets related to the specific problem they address (if they are
new), for the Web site .

Posters:
- Domain-specific spaces and similarities: papers that challenge and
motivate for searching in new spaces (i.e. domain-specific similarity
search). This type of contribution is expected to provide a thorough
study of the non/metric space properties (e.g., its intrinsic
dimension) or the similarity measure, and must include code for the
similarity computation and datasets for the Web site . For this kind
of paper a real-world domain-specific application of similarity search
is expected (e.g., multimedia databases, (bio)chemical & medical
databases, biometric databases, scientific & sensory databases, etc.).

Demos:
Similarity retrieval engines: papers that present prototypical
non-commercial engine entirely devoted to similarity search
applications. The presentation should cover the domains of
applicability (e.g., image retrieval system), the architecture,
scalability, user interfaces, optional comparison with similar
engines, etc. This type of contribution must include either an
installation package of the demo application + database, or must be
installed as a web application accessible to the SISAP PC.

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

* Range search
* knn search
* Limited-range knn search
* Reverse knn search
* New complex similarity query types
* Similarity joins
* Clustering (applied to indexing)
* Parallelism & distributed algorithms
* Approximate searching
* Computation of intrinsic dimension
* Cost models
* Embeddings
* Languages for similarity databases


SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS:

We remark that reviewing is double-blind, so please do not include
author information nor any data that discloses authorship in an
obvious way. Submissions must not exceed 8 pages (full paper), or 2
pages (poster or demo) and must adhere to the standard 8.5" X 11" IEEE
camera-ready format. Formatting instructions and LaTeX macros are
available on the IEEE Computer Society site.

Additional appendixes can use more pages but they will be read at the
discretion of the reviewer, so they should not be used for material
that is essential to understand the relevance of the contribution.

IMPORTANT DATES:

Abstract submission: March 29, 2009
Paper submission: April 5, 2009
Notification of acceptance: May 10, 2009
Final version: June 7, 2009

PROGRAM COMMITTEE:

Edgar Ch?vez, Universidad Michoacana, M?xico
Paolo Ciaccia, Universit? di Bologna, Italy
Alfredo Ferro, Universit? di Catania, Italy
Daniel Keim, Universitat Konstanz, Germany
Daniel Miranker, University of Texas at Austin, USA
Gonzalo Navarro, Universidad de Chile, Chile
Marco Patella, Universit? di Bologna, Italy
Hanan Samet, University of Maryland, USA
Tomas Skopal (co-chair), Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic
Pavel Zezula (co-chair), Masaryk University, Czech Republic

NEAR-BY EVENTS:

The term of SISAP workshop was planned to take place between two
important database events - VLDB 2009 (Aug 24-28, Lyon, France) and
DEXA 2009 (Aug 31-Sep 4, Linz, Austria) conferences. In particular,
travelling from Prague to Linz takes a few hours by car or train (200
km).

MORE INFORMATION & WEB OF THE WORKSHOP:

http://www.sisap.org/2009