The CodaWork’08 Workshop on Compositional Data Analysis is intended as a forum for discussion of research issues related to the statistical treatment and modelling of compositional data, the interpretation of models for compositional data and applications involving compositional data. The primary goal of the workshop is to identify important potential lines of future research and gain insight as to how they might be tackled. With this goal in mind, we intend to bring together specialist researchers, postgraduate students, data analysts as well as those with a general interest in the field, prepared to summarize and share crucial contributions and recent developments and to participate as members of a brainstorming think tank.