Resumen
Sensor networks have the potential to support applications ranging from habitat and structural monitoring, to home and building automation, to supply chain management. Users are typically interested in continuous streams of information representing the evolving status of systems, combined with periodic statistical reports about specific phenomena. Researchers are beginning to formulate languages and enumerate the types of queries needed by users of sensor networks. Sensor networks also need distributed query processing, whereby the data is stored and retrieved from nodes within the network. The performance and functionality of query processing systems is significantly affected by internode communication mechanisms provided by the networking layer. However, today's systems have prompted the exploration of only a limited number of the networking mechanisms that will be needed by tomorrow's sensor network applications. Each sensor network is unique in that it involves strict but wide-ranging performance requirements and is notably difficult to program.

Resumen
A group of database researchers, architects, users, and pundits met in May 2008 at the Claremont Resort in Berkeley, CA, to discuss the state of database it search and its effects on practice. This was the seventh meeting of this sort over the past 20 years and was distinguished by a broad consensus that the database community is at a turning point in its history, due to both an explosion of data and usage scenarios and major shifts in computing hardware and platforms. This article explores the conclusions of this self-assessment. The theme of the Claremont meeting was that database research and the data-management industry are at a turning point, with unusually rich opportunities for technical advances, intellectual achievement, entrepreneurship, and benefits for science and society. Given the large number of opportunities, it is important for the database research community to address issues that maximize relevance within the field, across computing, and in external fields as well.