Future database technology: driving forces and directions

Database systems have increasingly become an integral part of modern business. Owing to this success they seem to invite an ever growing number of application areas to utilize their potential. Not all these attempts are an unqualified success: Indeed, today's mature database techniques seem tailored to a comparatively narrow application segment, and new techniques are needed to meet the demands of the non-traditional applications. In turn, these techniques often have to await progress in other technologies. To plan for the future, both providers and users of database systems will have to judge what directions database technology will take in the future. The paper attempts to predict some of these directions. In order to avoid purely subjective speculations, the paper introduces a systematic basis by hypothesizing that developments have been driven in the past, and will so in the future, by three forces: new applications, new technologies, and new and evolving standards. The hypothesis is first tested by retracing the more recent and the current developments, at the same time providing the reader with a brief survey of the present state of the art. The hypothesis is then applied to the expected trends in these forces, leading to a number of propositions on where database technology will move in the near and not so near future. The more ambitious projections will finally be tempered by pointing out some of the retarding moments.