The IEEE ICDM 2004 workshop on the Foundation of Data Mining and the IEEE ICDM 2005 workshop on the Foundation of Semantic Oriented Data and Web Mining focused on topics ranging from the foundations of data mining to new data mining paradigms. The workshops brought together both data mining researchers and practitioners to discuss these two topics while seeking solutions to long standing data mining problems and stimul- ing new data mining research directions. We feel that the papers presented at these workshops may encourage the study of data mining as a scientific field and spark new communications and collaborations between researchers and practitioners. To express the visions forged in the workshops to a widerange of datam- ing researchers and practitioners and foster active participation in the study of foundations of data mining, we edited this volume by involving extended and updated versions of selected papers presented at those workshops as well as some other relevant contributions. The content of this book includes st- ies of foundations of data mining from theoretical, practical, algorithmical, and managerial perspectives. The following is a brief summary of the papers contained in this book.