th DEXA 2001, the 12 International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications was held on September 3-5, 2001, at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. The rapidly growing spectrum of database applications has led to the establishment of more specialized discussion platforms (DaWaK conference, EC Web conference, and DEXA workshop), which were all held in parallel with the DEXA conference in Munich. In your hands are the results of much effort, beginning with the preparation of the submitted papers. The papers then passed through the reviewing process, and the accepted...