Combinatorial and algebraic results for database relations -- Semantics of disjunctive deductive databases -- Database theory in Russia (1979–1991) (an overview) -- On the composition and decomposition of attributes and tuples -- Approximate dependency inference from relations -- Views and decompositions of databases from a categorical perspective -- Computing with infinitary logic -- Query languages with counters -- Naturally embedded query languages -- Optimizing incremental computation of datalog programs with non-deterministic semantics -- Optimizing active databases using the split technique (Preliminary Report) -- Updating atomic information in labelled database systems (extended abstract) -- Context-specific synchronization for atomic data types -- Hybrid atomicity for nested transactions -- Model and verification of a data manager based on ARIES -- Minimizing indefinite information in disjunctive deductive databases -- Well founded semantics and stable semantics of semi-strict programs -- On finding extensions of default theories -- Incremental evaluation of Datalog queries -- Decidability and undecidability of equivalence for linear Datalog, with applications to normal-form optimizations -- A paradox in database theory -- A hierarchy of faithful set creation in pure OODB's -- Identification, genericity and consistency in object-oriented databases -- Subsumption for complex object data models -- Semantic information connected with data -- Declarative foundations of secure deductive databases -- On materializing views and on-line queries -- Maintaining dictionaries: Space-saving modifications of B-trees -- Set-term matching in logic programming.

The papers in this volume were presented at the International Conference on Database Theory, held in Berlin, Germany, October 14-16, 1992. This conference initiated the merger of two series of conferences on theoretical aspects of databases that were formed in parallel by different scientific communities in Europe. The first series was known as the International Conference on Database Theory and the second as the Symposium on Mathematical Fundamentals of Database Systems. In the future, ICDT will be organized every two years, alternating with the more practically oriented series of conferences on Extending Database Technology (EDBT). The volume contains 3 invited lectures and 26 contributed papers selected from a total of 107 submissions. The papers are organized into sections on constraints and decomposition, query languages, updates and active databases, concurrency control and recovery, knowledge bases, datalog complexity and optimization, object orientation, information capacity and security, and data structures and algorithms. Two of the invited papers survey research into theoretical database issues done in Eastern Europe during the past decade.