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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2015
Extensive discoveries of variable stars in ground-based photometric surveys and in observations from space missions that provide unprecedented accuracy demonstrate that, till the most recent time, we knew only a tiny fraction of all detectable variable stars of our Galaxy. As a result, our knowledge on stellar variability types, related physical processes, variable-star statistics turn out to be based on an unrepresentative sample and are expected to be radically revised in the near future. The flow of new discoveries results in quite difficult problems for catalogs of variable stars, making it impossible to proceed in their compilation in the traditional way. Regretfully, automatic solutions are still not completely satisfying. Though not able to suggest a perfect way out, we present our vision of the future of variable-star research.