Book excerpt: The interaction of database and AI technologies is crucial to such applications as data mining, active databases, and knowledge-based expert systems. This volume collects the primary readings on the interactions, actual and potential, between these two fields. The editors have chosen articles to balance significant early research and the best and most comprehensive articles from the 1980s. An in-depth introduction discusses basic research motivations, giving a survey of the history, concepts, and terminology of the interaction. Major themes, approaches and results, open issues and future directions are all discussed, including the results of a major survey conducted by the editors of current work in industry and research labs. Thirteen sections follow, each with a short introduction. Topics examined include semantic data models with emphasis on conceptual modeling techniques for databases and information systems and the integration of data model concepts in high-level data languages, definition and maintenance of integrity constraints in databases and knowledge bases, natural language front ends, object-oriented database management systems, implementation issues such as concurrency control and error recovery, and representation of time and knowledge incompleteness from the viewpoints of databases, logic programming, and AI.