This yearmarks anexciting time in the XML-database space:XQueryis moving closer to becoming a
full W3C Recommendation and the Big 3 database vendors (IBM Oracle Microsoft) are expected
to release XQuery support in theirrelationalDBMSs
joininganumberofexistingopensourceandcommercial products. Thus we are very pleased to feature
an industrial paper (describing
theXML-speci?cfeaturesofMicrosoftSQLServer)aswellas14researchpapers. XSym s focus this year was
on building XML repositories and papers discussed the following topics: indexing support for
the evaluation of XPath and XQuery benchmarks and algorithms for XQuery and XPath evaluation
algorithms for constraint satisfaction checking information extraction and subtree matching
and applications of XML in information systems. This year XSym also coordinated its e?orts
with the Database and P- gramming Languages Symposium DBPL 2005. The resulting program
included not only presentations of the papers in this proceedings but also a joint DBPL- XSym
keynote talk by Giuseppe Castagna developer of the CDuce language for XML processing and a
joint panel on open XML research problems and challenges. The organizers would like to express
their gratitude to the XSym Program Committee and external reviewers for their e?orts in
providing very thorough evaluationsofthesubmittedpapersundersigni?canttimeconstraintsandto-
crosoftfortheirsponsorshipandfortheuseoftheMicrosoftConferenceMana- ment Toolkit. We would also
like to thank Gavin Bierman and Christoph Koch the organizersof DBPL for their e?orts
andtheir willingness to coordinate with us. These proceedings are dedicated to Alberto
Mendelzon who sadly passed awaythisyear.Asastrongsupporterofandactivecontributortothissymposium
series he will always remain in our memory.
