 While traditionally this conference had always been held within North America, it took place in Paris in 2004, Beijing in 2007, Athens in 2011, and Melbourne in 2015.The acceptance rate of the ACM SIGMOD Conference, averaged from 1996 to 2012, was 18%, and it was 17% in 2012.In association with SIGACT and SIGART, SIGMOD also sponsors the annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (PODS) conference on the theoretical aspects of database systems.