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.

Global competition is forcing reliability and other professionals to work closely during the product design and manufacturing phase. Because of this collaboration, reliability, usability, and quality principles are being applied across many diverse sectors of the economy. This book offers the principles, methods, and procedures for these areas in one resource. This book brings together the areas of reliability, usability, and quality for those working in diverse areas to allow them to be exposed to activities that can help them perform their tasks more effectively. This is the only book that covers these areas together in this manner and written in such a way that no previous knowledge is required to understand it. The sources of the material presented are included in the reference section at the end of each chapter along with examples and solutions to test reader comprehension. Applied Reliability, Usability, and Quality for Engineers is useful to design, manufacturing, and systems engineers, as well as manufacturing managers, reliability, usability and, quality specialists. It can also be helpful to graduate, senior undergraduate students, and instructors.

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.

Evolutionary computing, inspired by the biological world, is one of the emergent technologies of our time. Being essentially a software activity, it has been successfully applied, e.g. for optimization and machine learning in various areas. The tremendous increase in computational power and, more recently, the appearance of a new generation of programmable logic devices allow for a new approach to designing computing machines inspired by biological models: it is now possible to make the hardware itself evolve.
This book is based on a workshop on evolvable hardware, held in Lausanne, Switzerland, in October 1995. It reports the state of the art of research in this field and presents two introductory chapters, written with the novice reader in mind.

This book addresses issues concerning the engineering of system prod ucts that make use of computing technology. These systems may be prod ucts in their own right, for example a computer, or they may be the computerised control systems inside larger products, such as factory automation systems, transportation systems and vehicles, and personal appliances such as portable telephones. In using the term engineering the authors have in mind a development process that operates in an integrated sequence of steps, employing defined techniques that have some scientific basis. Furthermore we expect the operation of the stages to be subject to controls and standards that result in a product fit for its intended purpose, both in the hands of its users and as a business venture. Thus the process must take account of a wide range of requirements relating to function, cost, size, reliabili ty and so on. It is more difficult to define the meaning of computing technology. These days this involves much more than computers and software. For example, many tasks that might be performed by software running in a general purpose computer can also be performed directly by the basic technology used to construct a computer, namely digital hardware. However, hardware need not always be digital; we live in an analogue world, hence analogue signals appear on the boundaries of our systems and it can sometimes be advantageous to allow them to penetrate further."

This book presents the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAiSE '96, held in Herakleion, Crete, Greece, in May 1996.
The 30 revised full papers included in the book were selected from a total of some 100 submissions. The book is organised in sections on CASE environments, temporal and active database technologies, experience reports, interoperability in information systems, formal methods in system development, novel architectures, workflow management and distributed information systems, information modelling, object-oriented database design, and semantic links and abstraction.

This book presents the refereed proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, TACAS '96, held in Passau, Germany in March 1996.
The book presents 19 revised full papers selected from a total of 47 submissions together with 11 tool presentations and 3 invited papers. The collection of papers addresses all current aspects of the design and analysis of distributed systems; the volume is organized in topical sections on tools, model checking and testing, security, models and methods, case studies, and logic and programs.

Highlights the broad field of AI applications in education, regarding any type of artificial intelligence that is correlated with education Discusses learning methodologies, intelligent tutoring systems, intelligent student guidance and assessments, intelligent educational chatbots, and artificial tutors Presents the practicality and applicability implications of AI in education Includes new and current research from research centers and higher education universities Offers case studies of AI techniques in educational activities

This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling, ER '96, held in Cottbus, Germany, in October 1996.
The volume presents three invited contributions together with 29 revised full papers selected from 110 submissions. The papers cover all current aspects of the entity-relationship approach and conceptual modeling; they are organized in sections on advanced schema design, processes, query languages, representation, integration, principles of database design, transformation, enhanced modelling, capturing design information, and evolution.

The Information System Consultant's Handbook familiarizes systems analysts, systems designers, and information systems consultants with underlying principles, specific documentation, and methodologies.
Corresponding to the primary stages in the systems development life cycle, the book divides into eight sections:
o Principles
o Information Gathering and Problem Definition
o Project Planning and Project Management
o Systems Analysis
o Identifying Alternatives
o Component Design
o Testing and Implementation
o Operation and Maintenance
Eighty-two chapters comprise the book, and each chapter covers a single tool, technique, set of principles, or methodology. The clear, concise narrative, supplemented with numerous illustrations and diagrams, makes the material accessible for readers - effectively outlining new and unfamiliar analysis and design topics.

This book developed from an IFIP workshop which brought together methods and architecture researchers in Human Computer Interaction and Software Engineering. To an extent this introduction is a little unfair to the authors, as we have distilled the results of the workshop to give the reader a perspective of the problems within integrated approaches to usability engineering. The papers could not hope to address all ofthe issues; however, we hope that a framework will help the reader gainfurther insights into current research andfuture practice. The initial motivation was to bring together researchers and practitioners to exchange their experiences on Graphical User Interface (Gill) design problems. The two groups represented methodological and architecture/tools interests, so the workshop focused on intersection of how methods can support user interface development and vice versa, how tools, architectures and reusable components can empower the design process. There is, we believe, a constructive tension between these two communities. Methodologists tend to approach the design problem with task/domain/organisational analysis while the tool builders suggest design empowerment/envisioning as a means ofimproving the way users work rather than relying on analysis ofcurrent systems. This debate revolves around the questions of whether users' current work is optimal, or whether designers have the insight to empower users by creating effective solutions to their problems. Tool builders typically want to build something, then get the users to try it, while the methodologists want to specify something, validate it and then build it.

The areas of active and real-time databases have seen a tremendous growth of interest in the past few years, particularly with regard to their support of time-critical and embedded applications. ARTDB-95 provided, therefore, an important forum for researchers from both communities to discuss research results, and also to chart new directions for the future. As well as the 11 submitted papers presented at the workshop, this volume also contains 4 invited papers on the following topics: the impact of active databases on commercial practice; the optimization of active database transactions; the need for better language, compiler and tool support for real-time databases; and the origin of time constraints associated with data, events and actions. Together the papers give a comprehensive overview of current research, and will provide invaluable reading for academic and industrial researchers and students at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

This book presents 12 revised refereed papers selected as the best from 32 submissions for the First International Workshop on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, TACAS '95, held in Aarhus, Denmark, in May 1995.
The workshop brought together 46 researchers interested in the development and application of tools and algorithms for specification, verification, analysis, and construction of distributed systems. The papers included in the book are devoted to refinement-based and compositional verification, construction techniques, analysis and verification via theorem proving, process algebras, temporal and modal logics, techniques for real-time, hybrid and probabilistic systems, and value-passing systems.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Static Analysis Symposium, SAS '96, held in Aachen, Germany, in September 1996 in conjunction with ALP and PLILP.
The volume presents 22 highly-quality revised full papers selected from a total of 79 submissions; also included are three system descriptions and invited contributions by Alex Aiken (abstract only), Flemming Nielson, and Bernhard Steffen. Among the topics addressed are program analysis, incremental analysis, abstract interpretation, partial evaluation, logic programming, functional programming, and constraint programming.

Practical Usage of ISPF Dialog Manager is a concise and comprehensive source of information for the development of applications using IBM's Dialog Management package. Dialog Manager is a vehicle for implementing dialogue applications (such as PDF - Program Development Facility) and is very well suited to the implementation of individual dialogue systems and those systems which are required to run from the TSO/ISPF environment. It is also ideally suited for prototyping.
This book is intended for both beginners and experts. With its carefully chosen blend of theory and practice, and extensive use of examples and case studies, this book will provide an invaluable guide to all those needing to learn about or using the ISPF Dialog Manager.

This book is the final outcome of the Eurographics Workshop on Design, Specification and Verification of Interactive Systems, that was held in Bonas, from June 7 to 9, 1995. This workshop was the second of its kind, following the successful first edition in Italy in 1994. The goal of this ongoing series of meetings is to review the state of the art in the domain of tools, notations and methodologies supporting the design of Interactive Systems. This acknowledges the fact that making systems that are friendlier to the user makes the task ever harder to the designers of such systems, and that much research is still needed to provide the appropriate conceptual and practical tools. The workshop was located in the Chateau de Bonas, in the distant countryside of Toulouse, France. Tms location has been selected to preserve the quiet and studious atmosphere that was established in the monastery of Santa Croce at Bocca di Magra for the first edition, and that was much enjoyed by the participants. The conversations initiated during the sessions often lasted till late at night, in the peaceful atmosphere of the Gers landscape.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Static Analysis, SAS '95, held in Glasgow, UK, in September 1995. Static Analysis is increasingly recognized as a foundation for high-performance implementations and verification systems of high-level programming languages.
22 full revised papers selected from a total of 55 submissions are presented; they address static analysis issues for different programming paradigms; in particular concurrent, constraint, functional, imperative, logic, and object-oriented programming are addressed. In addition there are abstracts or full papers for three invited presentations and two system descriptions.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Memory Management, IWMM '95, held in Kinross, Scotland, in September 1995. It contains 17 full revised papers on all current aspects of memory management; among the topics addressed are garbage collection for parallel, real-time, and distributed memory systems, memory management of distributed and of persistent objects, programming language aspects, hardware-assisted garbage collection, and open-network garbage collection.
In addition, the book presents the invited paper "Dynamic Storage Allocation: A Survey and Review" by a team of four authors from the University of Texas at Austin, which surveys the literature on allocators between 1961 and 1995.