In this, an era of information explosion, computer play an increasingly important role in storing, manipulating, and retrieving data. Data base management systems are designed to simplify these tasks, and the greater tasks that require that these systems be networked, such as real-time information handling. There are many important problems in the design and development of centralized and distributed data base management systems. Solutions are generally first presented in technical papers in journals and conference proceedings. This volume collects a set of these fundamental and up-to-date papers on various problems in the field of data base design, implementation, and expansion.