The Sorbonne University is very proud to host this year the oms Conference on Object Oriented Information Systems. There is a growing awareness of the importance of object oriented techniques, methods and tools to support information systems engineering. The term information systems implies that the computer based systems are designed to provide adequate and timely information to human users in organizations. The term engineering implies the application of a rigorous set of problem solving approaches analogous to those found in traditional engineering disciplines. The intent of this conference is to present a selected number of those approaches which favor an object oriented view of systems engineering. oms '98 is the fifth edition of a series of conferences. Starting in 1994 in London, this series evolved from a British audience to a truly European one. The goal is to build a world wide acknowledged forum dedicated to object oriented information systems engineering. This conference is organized with the aim to bring together researchers and practitioners in Information Systems, Databases and Software Engineering who have interests in object oriented information systems. The objective is to advance understanding about how the object technology can empower information systems in organizations, on techniques for designing effective and efficient information systems and methods and development tools for information systems engineering. The conference aims also at discussing the lessons learned from large scale projects using objects. The call for oms was given international audience.

New object-oriented technologies have been conceived and implemented over the past decade in order to manage complexity inherent in information systems development. Research has spanned from information systems modelling languages (UML and OML) to databases (ODMG), from programming languages (Java) to middleware technology (CORBA). A more widespread use of the Internet has led to the emergence and integration of various other technologies, such as XML and database connectivity tools, allowing businesses to access and exchange information over the Internet. The main theme of OOIS 2000 was "Object-Technology and New Business Opportunities" and focused on research conducted in the area of effective information systems development for the promotion of e-commerce. Papers were invited from academics and practitioners. The thirty-nine papers accepted for oms 2000 are included in these proceedings. It is nice to see this year that the shift from centralised to distributed systems and the widespread access and use of the Internet has allowed the advent of new opportunities for businesses to exploit, in the form of e-commerce.

Welcome to 00lS'01 and Calgary! This is the 7th International Conference on Object-Oriented Information Systems (OOlS) that focus on Object-Oriented and Web-Based Frameworks for Information Systems. In the last few years we've seen significant new development in this field, from one-off design technologies to reusable frameworks, and from web applications to bioinformatic systems. We perceive that information processing is one of the most important activities of human beings. Object-orientation and frameworks have been the main-stream technologies for design and implementation of large-scale and complex information systems. Recent research advances and industrial innovations in information systems modeling and Internet applications have explored the new trends in shifting information system vendors from component and system developers to services providers. Users of information systems are increasingly demanding higher performance, mobility, and personalization in order to realize the dream to access and obtain necessary information anywhere and anytime. The new development requires the investigation of new architectures, frameworks, processes, and inter-connectivity of information systems at society, organization, team, and personal levels. The 00lS'01 Proceedings has put together a program of 53 papers from leading researchers and practitioners in the field of object technology and information systems.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Object-Oriented Information Systems, OOIS 2002, held in Montpellier, France, in September 2002. The 34 revised full papers and 17 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 116 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on developing web services, object databases, XML and web, component and ontology, UML modeling, object modeling and information systems adaptation, e-business models and workflow, performance and method evaluation, programming and tests, software engineering metries, web-based information systems, architecture and Corba, and roles and evolvable objects.

With the development of the World-Wide Web, data management problems have branched out from the traditional framework in which tabular data is processed under the strict control of an application, and address today the rich variety of information that is found on the Web, considering a variety of ?exible envir- ments under which such data can be searched, classi ed , and processed. Da- base systems are coming forward today in a new role as the primary backend for the information provided on the Web. Most of today’s Web accesses trigger some form of content generation from a database, while electronic commerce often triggers intensive DBMS-based applications. The research community has begun to revise data models, query languages, data integration techniques, - dexes, query processing algorithms, and transaction concepts in order to cope with the characteristics and scale of the data on the Web. New problems have been identi ed , among them goal-oriented information gathering, management of semi-structured data, or database-style query languages for Web data, to name just a few. The International Workshop on the Web and Databases (WebDB) is a series of workshops intended to bring together researchers interested in the interaction between databases and the Web. This year’s WebDB 2000 was the third in the series, and was held in Dallas, Texas, in conjunction with the ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data.

This volume contains the papers presented at the Intemational Conference on Object Oriented Information Systems 00lS'94, held at South Bank University, London, December 19 - 21, 1994. In response to our call for papers, a total 85 papers from 24 different countries were submitted. Each paper was evaluated by at least two Program Committee members and an additional reviewer. Together, we selected 41 papers for presentation at the conference and inclusion in the Proceedings. Also included are the keynote addresses by Peter Gray and Michael Jackson. The other submissions were recommended for presentation in the poster sessions. Peter Gray, our invited speaker, evaluates the problems of object-oriented systems and data independence by looking at how object oriented database applications are failing to perceive its benefits, and instead rely too much on encapsulation. He suggests alternative kinds of object storage to preserve data independence. The second invited speaker, Michael Jackson describes a way of solving problems, by focusing directly on the problems themselves, their components and structures and on the relationships between the problem and the solution method. He discusses a particular view of the role of object-orientation in software development.

Since the late 1980s, the CAiSE conferences have provided a forum for the p- sentation and exchange of research results and practical experiences within the ?eld of Information Systems Engineering. CAiSE 2001 was the 13th conference in this series and was held from 4th to 8th June 2001 in the resort of Int- laken located near the three famous Swiss mountains – the Eiger, M ̈ onch, and Jungfrau. The ?rst two days consisted of pre-conference workshops and tutorials. The workshop themes included requirements engineering, evaluation of modeling methods, data integration over the Web, agent-oriented information systems, and the design and management of data warehouses. Continuing the tradition of recent CAiSE conferences, there was also a doctoral consortium. The p- conference tutorials were on the themes of e-business models and XML appli- tion development. The main conference program included three invited speakers, two tuto- als, and a panel discussion in addition to presentations of the papers in these proceedings. We also included a special ‘practice and experience’ session to give presentersanopportunitytoreportonanddiscussexperiencesandinvestigations on the use of methods and technologies in practice. Weextendourthankstothemembersoftheprogramcommitteeandallother referees without whom such conferences would not be possible. The program committee, whose members came from 20 di?erent countries, selected 27 hi- quality research papers and 3 experience reports from a total of 97 submissions. The topics of these papers span the wide-range of topics relevant to information systems engineering – from requirements and design through to implementation and operation of complex and dynamic systems.

"The software engineering community has advanced greatly in recent years and we currently have numerous defined items of knowledge, such as standards, methodologies, methods, metrics, techniques, languages, patterns, knowledge related to processes, concepts, etc.The main objective of this book is to give a unified and global vision about Micro-Architectural Design Knowledge, analyzing the main techniques, experiences and methods"--Provided by publisher.

Software engineering is playing an increasingly significant role in computing and informatics, necessitated by the complexities inherent in large-scale software development. To deal with these difficulties, the conventional life-cycle approaches to software engineering are now giving way to the "process system" approach, encompassing development methods, infrastructure, organization, and management. Until now, however, no book fully addressed process-based software engineering or set forth a fundamental theory and framework of software engineering processes. Software Engineering Processes: Principles and Applications does just that. Within a unified framework, this book presents a comparative analysis of current process models and formally describes their algorithms. It systematically enables comparison between current models, avoidance of ambiguity in application, and simplification of manipulation for practitioners. The authors address a broad range of topics within process-based software engineering and the fundamental theories and philosophies behind them. They develop a software engineering process reference model (SEPRM) to show how to solve the problems of different process domains, orientations, structures, taxonomies, and methods. They derive a set of process benchmarks-based on a series of international surveys-that support validation of the SEPRM model. Based on their SEPRM model and the unified process theory, they demonstrate that current process models can be integrated and their assessment results can be transformed between each other. Software development is no longer just a black art or laboratory activity. It is an industrialized process that requires the skills not just of programmers, but of organization and project managers and quality assurance specialists. Software Engineering Processes: Principles and Applications is the key to understanding, using, and improving upon effective engineering procedures for software development.

CAiSE 2000 was the 12th in the series of International Conferences on Advanced Information Systems Engineering. In the year 2000 the conference returned to Stockholm where it was organized the very first time. Since that year, 1989, the CAiSE conferences have developed into an important forum for the presentation and exchange of research results and practical experiences within the field of Information Systems Engineering. The objective of the CAiSE conference series is to bring together researchers and practitioners in the field of information systems engineering to meet annually in order to discuss evolving research issues and applications in this field. The CAiSE conference series also aims to provide an opportunity for young scientists to establish relationships with senior scientists in their areas of interest. Stockholm is an important center of research and development for some of the leading IT and communications companies in Europe and indeed, in the world. In tune with this environment, a major theme of CAiSE 2000 was "information systems and services in a digitized world". This theme reflects the vast improvements in communication technology, including the increasing use of Internet and WWW, that has taken place over the last years, and that has led to better communication and easier information access in general. In addition, this development has initiated changes in the way organizations cooperate and trade.