This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th Algorithms and Data Structures Symposium, WADS 2017, held in St. John's, NL, Canada, in July/August 2017. The 49 full papers presented together with 3 abstracts of invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 109 submissions. They present original research on the theory and application of algorithms and data structures in many areas, including combinatorics, computational geometry, databases, graphics, and parallel and distributed computing. The WADS Symposium, which alternates with the Scandinavian Symposium and Workshops on Algorithm Theory, SWAT, is intended as a forum for researchers in the area of design and analysis of algorithms and data structures. Papers presenting original research on the theory and application of algorithms and data structures

To understand the power of distributed systems, it is necessary to understand their inherent limitations: what problems cannot be solved in particular systems, or without sufficient resources (such as time or space). This book presents key techniques for proving such impossibility results and applies them to a variety of different problems in a variety of different system models. Insights gained from these results are highlighted, aspects of a problem that make it difficult are isolated, features of an architecture that make it inadequate for solving certain problems efficiently are identified, and different system models are compared.