Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMSs) have been the predominant database systems over the last decades; they are established and mature systems with a declarative standard language SQL that offers complex operations (like joins) and their tabular data format is simple, strong, widely used and easy-to-understand. However, recent developments in distributed storage systems and large amount of data, so-called “Big Data”, have revealed some inherent weaknesses of the relational model.

Linked Data is nowadays a standard way to represent data on a wide range of topics. To support the Linked Open Data initiative, the European Commission has established the Open Data Portal where many datasets from EU institutions have been published as Linked Data. In the last few years NoSQL databases and Semantic Web technologies have matured enough, so that the Gartner, Inc., the world's leading information technology research and advisory company, has identified them as the top technology trends that will play key roles in modernizing information management in 2013 and beyond. Thus it is natural that a 'NoSQL Databases and Linked Data Technologies' workshop is organized in conjunction with the DEXA conference, one of the oldest conferences for intelligent information management.

The new research challenges, that will be also addressed in this workshop, are related to:

the emerging methods and techniques leveraged in NoSQL databases
the emerging pan-European data infrastructure that will enable interoperability, interlinking and reuse of data in public and also commercial services,
the need for flexible adoption of the data representation (schema evolution) and agile software development,
the need for enhanced security in the forthcoming business models (e-government, e-commerce)