As we are in a fast changing world, the objectives that the lab has been pursuing have changed over time.
Because the 1988-1991 period was a time where the new lab was not in a position to produce research results, the immediate concern, beyond launching the lab (see below), has been to keep an activity at the international level by building on the cooperation with the university of Burgundy (where Prof. Spaccapietra was before joing EPFL) and by capitalizing on the reputation on conceptual modeling. This explains that achievements during those years have been in terms of joint publications with French colleagues and tutorials on conceptual modeling. This cooperation also allowed to resume some previous work on view integration and to lead it to significant results (first published in the first issue of the VLDB Journal). A joint project with ETHZ was initiated as a direct consequence of this activity.

The first objective assigned to the lab, once it had enough people (1990), has been the development of the SUPER prototype. Beyond the fact that an operational prototype implementing the ERC data model and languages would contribute to assessing previous work on conceptual modeling, the prototype was expected to generate enough interest in some industrial partners to launch a technology transfer project aiming at turning the prototype into a commercial product. This idea did not materialize, but in developing the prototype we gained enough insight into the problems of visual interfaces specification to become one of the leading research groups on the topic. From 1990 to 1995, through demonstrations at conferences, publications in many international conferences and journals, organizations of panels and of seminars on interfaces and taking an active part in promoting the Visual Database Systems conference, we have been trying to establish the reputation of the lab at the highest international level in the visual interfaces academic community.

As stated above, work on SUPER was suspended to turn the focus of the lab to more traditional research activities, so that assistants and some extra Ph.D. students could have time to prepare their thesis. The objective during those years has been twofold. On one hand we had the traditional academic goal of publishing at the best possible international level. ER conferences have been a preferred target as they represent the major event in the database design domain. On the other hand promotion of the lab within its Swiss environment, organizing conferences, seminars, courses, has been a continuous effort.

The promotional activities eventually payed off starting 1994. First, the cantonal administration (ACV), which had had the opportunity to experience our conceptual modeling approach (ERC+) in a project lead by EPFL's rural engineering department (DGR), expressed the desire for an extension of our approach to spatial data modeling, so that they could apply the approach to their major spatial applications. As a member of the scientific committee for the DGR project, Prof. Spaccapietra had had a chance to verify that spatial database raise interesting modeling issues. Discussions with the ACV showed that there was a real high potential user interest for the technology transfer we had been looking for on our modeling approach. This match between research interests and potential applications lead to the decision to put a high investment (beyond what was needed by the project with the cantonal administration) in the spatial database domain. Much more than DBMS users, GIS users are aware of the need for proper user-oriented database technology (which is what we support at the lab). Opportunities for cooperation and technology transfer are therefore higher in GIS-related applications. Spatial databases have now become one of the lab's major research axes. GIS projects already brought to the lab two post-docs (96-97) and two PhD students.

At approximately the same time the lab was approached by the Swiss Romande Radio to help in finding a solution to store its sound archives. Again, we decided to invest into this project because it seemed to provide an excellent concrete opportunity for the lab to participate into EPFL's efforts in the multimedia domain. Multimedia had indeed been stated as a priority domain for EPFL and we had already launched a project related to image databases. The objective for the lab is to complement other multimedia related activities in EPFL and help EPFL establishing a leadership in this domain. The Radio project is on its way now, with promises of a brillant future. Three people in the lab are currently on this project.

Finally, the lab's participation has also been requested in two european projects, where the partners needed help in user interfaces development. Several reasons lead me to participate. First, of course, building an interface for a future commercial tool was a natural follow-on to our SUPER activities and a contribution in establishing the lab as a competence centre for user interfaces. Second, participating into european projects is highly recommended for both financial and marketing reasons. Third, the projects were in the area of client/server architectures, a domain were the lab could get a new interesting know-how. Three positions have been fulfilled thanks to this project.

To recall, in short, the objectives for the lab over the past year, they have been and are:

• to assess our proposals for a conceptual modeling approach with a prototype and to prepare for a technology transfer (SUPER project, ERC+ modeling approach)
• to become a major driving force in spatio-temporal database modeling at the international level (MADS project)
• to become in the short term the Swiss reference for sound archiving while gradually expanding our multimedia know-how to respond to public institutions needs (National Sound Archives, National Library, ...) (SIRANAU project)
• to maintain some leadership in visual interfaces (ESPRIT HELIOS and EUREKA SWAP projects)