  This article is based on a talk given by one of us (EVI) at the conference
``StatPhys-Taipei-1997''. It overviews the exact results in the theory of the
sandpile model and discusses shortly yet unsolved problem of calculation of
avalanche distribution exponents. The key ingredients include the analogy with
the critical reaction-diffusion system, the spanning tree representation of
height configurations and the decomposition of the avalanche process into waves
of topplings.
