This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Formal Techniques in Real-Time and Fault-Tolerant Systems, FTRTFT'98, held in Lyngby, Denmark, in September 1998.
The 22 revised full papers presented were carefully selected and reviewed for inclusion in the book. Also included are four invited contributions and five tool demonstrations. The papers address the current aspects of the hot topic of embedded systems, in particular temporal logic, requirements engineering, analysis techniques, verification, model checking, and applications.

An increasing recognition of the role of the human-system interface is leading to new extensions and styles of specification. Techniques are being developed that facilitate the expression of user-oriented requirements and the refinement and checking of specifications of interactive systems. This book reflects the state of the art in this important area and also contains a summary of working group discussions about how the various techniques represented might be applied to a common case study.

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.

Correct Systems looks at the whole process of building a business process model, capturing that in a formal requirements statement and developing a precise specification. The issue of testing is considered throughout the process and design for test issues are fundamental to the approach. A model (language) and a methodology are presented that is very powerful, very easy to use and applicable for the "new world" of component based systems and the integration of systems from dependable components. This book discusses a new area which will be of interest to both software and hardware designers. It presents specification, design, implementation and testing in a user-oriented fashion using simple formal and diagramming techniques with a high level of user-friendliness. The first part provides a simple introduction to the method together with a complete, real case study. The second part describes, in detail, the mathematical theory behind the methods and the claims made.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on System Configuration Management, SCM-8, held in conjunction with ECOOP'98 in Brussels, Belgium, in July 1998.
The volume presents 17 revised full papers carefully reviewed and selected for presentation; also included is a tutorial lecture; approximately half of the papers come from industry. The book is divided into sections on industrial experience, experimental systems, product data management and system configuration management, formal approaches, cooperative systems, and Web-based applications.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference documentation of the Fourth International Conference on Hybrid Systems held in Ithaca, NY, USA, in October 1996. The volume presents 19 carefully revised full papers selected from numerous submissions. Hybrid systems research focuses on modeling, design, and validation of interacting systems (plants) and computer programs (control automata). This volume is devoted to hybrid systems models, formal verification, computer simulation, goal reachability, algorithms for extracting hybrid control programs, and application models for avionics, highway traffic control, and air traffic control.

This book presents the history and state of the art of universal routing strategies, which can be applied to networks independently of their respective topologies. It opens with a self-contained introduction, accessible also to newcomers. The main original results are new universal network protocols for store-and-forward and wormhole routing with small buffers or without buffers; these results are presented in detail and their potential applications are discussed. The book ends with a summary of open problems and an outlook of future directions in the area of routing theory.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAiSE'97, held in Barcelona, Spain, in June 1997. The volume presents 30 revised full papers selected from a total of 112 submissions; also included is one invited contribution. The book is divided into topical sections on requirements engineering; information systems design; methods, environments, and tools; distributed information systems; and workflow systems.

As the integration of statistical data collected in various subject matter domains becomes more and more important in several socio-economic etc. investigation areas the management of so-called metadata - a formal digital processing of information about data - gains tremendously increasing relevance. Unlike current information technologies (e.g., database systems, computer networks, ...) facilitating merely the technical side of data collation, a coherent integration of empirical data still remains cumbersome, and thus rather costly, very often because of a lack of powerful semantic data models capturing the very meaning and structure of statistical data sets. Recognizing this deficiency, "Metadata Management" proposes a general framework for the computer-aided integration and harmonization of distributed heterogeneous statistical data sources, aiming at a truly comprehensive statistical meta-information system.

In this volume Gerold Riempp examines the interaction of different workflow management systems (WFMS) in geographically-distributed and legally-separate organisations. This is an emerging field of research known as Wide Area Workflow Management (WAWM). He examines the technical and managerial aspects of workflow management via a framework which he has developed to describe the problems involved in WAWM and to find viable solutions. Based on this theoretical framework, the author also develops a prototype software framework - the Wide Area GroupFlow System - to demonstrate the solutions via practical software tools. The tools will be available to the reader via the WWW. Also included are the results of case studies from some of the 15 developers who have been using this software over the past two years.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, TACAS '97, held in Enschede, The Netherlands, in April 1997.
The book presents 20 revised full papers and 5 tool demonstrations carefully selected out of 54 submissions; also included are two extended abstracts and a full paper corresponding to invited talks. The papers are organized in topical sections on space reduction techniques, tool demonstrations, logical techniques, verification support, specification and analysis, and theorem proving, model checking and applications.

This book constitutes a carefully arranged selection of revised full papers chosen from the presentations given at the Second International Conference on Vector and Parallel Processing - Systems and Applications, VECPAR'96, held in Porto, Portugal, in September 1996.
Besides 10 invited papers by internationally leading experts, 17 papers were accepted from the submitted conference papers for inclusion in this documentation following a second round of refereeing. A broad spectrum of topics and applications for which parallelism contributes to progress is covered, among them parallel linear algebra, computational fluid dynamics, data parallelism, implementational issues, optimization, finite element computations, simulation, and visualisation.

This book is based on extensive experience teaching VHDL to undergraduate students at the University of Portsmouth, UK, and to engineers in industry through short courses run by Mentor Graphics Corporation, USA.

This monograph presents a comprehensive state-of-the-art survey on approaches to the design of intelligent agents. On the theoretical side, the author identifies a set of general requirements for autonomous interacting agents and provides an essential step towards understanding the principles of intelligent agents. On the practical side, the novel agent architecture InteRRaP is introduced: the detailed description and evaluation of this architecture is an ideal guideline and case study for software engineers or researchers faced with the task of building an agent system.
The book uniquely bridges the gap between theory and practice; it addresses active and novice researchers as well as practitioners interested in applicable agent technology.

The RPC-memory specification problem was proposed by Broy and Lamport as a case study in the formal design of distributed and concurrent systems. As a realistic example typical for operating systems and hardware design, the RPC-memory problem was used as the basis for comparing various approaches to formal specification, refinement, and verification.
Preliminary solutions were discussed during a workshop at Schloss Dagstuhl, Germany, in September 1994. Then an extensive discussion took place between the referees and authors. Finally 15 thoroughly revised papers were accepted for inclusion in this volume in full detail together with the problem statement and a synopsis.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Conference on Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design, FMCAD '96, held in Palo Alto, California, USA, in November 1996.
The 25 revised full papers presented were selected from a total of 65 submissions; also included are three invited survey papers and four tutorial contributions. The volume covers all relevant formal aspects of work in computer-aided systems design, including verification, synthesis, and testing.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Fourth International AMAST Workshop on Real-Time Systems and Concurrent and Distributed Software, ARTS'97, held in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, in May 1997.
The volume presents 24 carefully selected revised full papers. Also included are two historical contributions honoring Ramon Llull, who was born on Mallorca, as well as two invited papers. All current issues in the field of formal methods for real-time systems and distributed and concurrent systems are addressed.

This book presents the refereed proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Design and Implementation of Symbolic Computation Systems, DISCO '96, held in Karlsruhe, Germany, in September 1996.
The volume includes four invited contributions surveying the state of the art in a particular subfield or pointing to some new research directions together with 31 revised full papers selected from a total of some 70 submissions. Many current aspects of mathematical software systems, as employed e.g. in computer algebra, automated theorem proving, or al- gebraic specification are addressed.

Making systems easier to use implies an ever increasing complexity in managing communication between users and applications. Indeed an increasing part of the application code is devoted to the user interface portion. In order to manage this complexity, it is important to have tools, notations, and methodologies which support the designer s work during the refinement process from specification to implementation. Selected revised papers from the Eurographics workshop in Namur review the state of the art in this area, comparing the different existing approaches to this field in order to identify the principle requirements and the most suitable notations, and indicate the meaningful results which can be obtained from them."

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications, DEXA '96, held in Zurich, Switzerland, in September 1996.
The 77 revised full papers included were selected from a total of nearly 200 submissions. They report on a broad spectrum of advanced applications and the design of database and expert systems. Among the topics addressed are object-oriented databases, active databases, temporal databases, transactions and concurrency, relational databases, CSCW and workflow systems, parallel and distributed systems, expert systems, knowledge-based systems, and information retrieval.

This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Formal Techniques in Real-Time and Fault-Tolerant Systems, FTRTFTS '96, held in Uppsala, Sweden, in September 1996.
The 22 revised full papers presented were selected from a total of 61 submissions; also included are three invited contributions and five tools demonstrations. The papers are organized in sections on state charts, timed automata, duration calculus, case studies, scheduling, fault tolerance, specification, and verification.

Disciplines, including Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), consist of knowledge supporting practices which solve general problems (Long & Dowell, 1989). A disci pline thus requires knowledge to be acquired which can be applied by practitioners to solve problems within the scope of the discipline. In the case of HCI, such knowledge is being acquired through research and, less formally, through the description of successful system development practice. Some have argued that knowledge is further embodied in the artefacts. HCI knowledge is applied to solve user interface design problems. Such applica tion is facilitated if the knowledge is expressed in a conception which makes explicit the design problems of practitioners. A conception has been proposed by Dowell & Long (1989). The conception provides a framework within which to reason about the implications of designs for system performance. The framework is concordant with the trend towards design, discernible in recent HCI research. It is further compatible with notions of top-down design, fundamental to software engineering practice. 2 Teaching and the HeI Research and Development Gap 2.1 An Assessment of Current HCI Education Teaching is one means by which practitioners learn to specify discipline problems. It is also a means by which they acquire knowledge to enable the problems to be solved."

There is now a serious discussion taking place about the moment at which human beings will be surpassed and replaced by the machine. On the one hand we are designing machines which embed more and more human intelligence, but at the same time we are in danger of becoming more and more like machines. In these circumstances, we all need to consider: * What can we do? * What should we do? * What are the alternatives of doing it? This book is about the human-centred alternative of designing systems and technologies. This alternative is rooted in the European tradition of human-centredness which emphasises the symbiosis of human capabilities and machine capacity. The human-centred tra dition celebrates the diversity of human skill and ingenuity and provides an alternative to the 'mechanistic' paradigm of 'one best way', the 'sameness of science' and the 'dream of the exact language'. This alternative vision has its origin in the founding European human-centred movements of the 1970s. These include the British movement of Socially Useful Technology, the Scandinavian move ment of Democratic Participation, and the German movement of Humanisation of Work and Technology. The present volume brings together various strands of human-centred systems philosophy which span the conceptual richness and cultural diversity of the human-centred movements. The core ideas of human-centredness include human-machine symbiosis, the tacit dimension of knowl edge, the system as a tool rather than a machine, dialogue, partici pation, social shaping and usability.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computer Aided Verification, CAV '96, held in New Brunswick, NJ, USA, in July/August 1996 as part of the FLoC '96 federated conference.
The volume presents 32 revised full research contributions selected from a total of 93 submissions; also included are 20 carefully selected descriptions of tools and case studies. The set of papers reports the state-of-the-art of the theory and practice of computer assisted formal analysis methods for software and hardware systems; a certain emphasis is placed on verification tools and the algorithms and techniques that are needed for their implementation.

This reference book documents the scientific outcome of the DIMACS/SYCON Workshop on Verification and Control of Hybrid Systems, held at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, in October 1995.
A hybrid system consists of digital devices that interact with analog environments. Computer science contributes expertise on the analog aspects of this emerging field of interdisciplinary research and design. The 48 revised full papers included were strictly refereed; they present the state of the art in this dynamic field with contributions by leading experts. Also available are the predecessor volumes published in the same series as LNCS 999 and LNCS 736.