This book coherently documents the results and experiences of a major digital library pilot effort, the MeDoc project (Multimedia Electronic Documents). This two-year project was initiated by the German Informatics Society (GI) and involved authors, publishers, librarians, and computer science departments. The prototype distributed digital library system developed during the initiative was operated in a nationwide trial for several months. The book presents the technical and operational results achieved during the project as well as input from foreign digital library activities. Besides professionals active in the area of digital library research and design, this book addresses librarians and others engaged in scientific publishing.

Software development environments are integrated sets of tools, techniques and processes that assist in the sys- tematic development of software products. They are intended to support all phases of the software development cycle: requirements definition, design, implementation, test, and maintenance. These Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools typically make use of graphic manipulation facilities and rely on some form of development database to exchange various types of design objects between tools. Facilitated by the availability of powerful workstations, implementations of these technologies are now within reach of every software developer. This volume presents the proceedings of a symposium organized by the GI (Gesellschaft fA1/4r Informatik), the GMD (Gesellschaft fA1/4r Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung) and ESEC (European Software Engineering Conferences). The symposium brought together application development managers and top specialists involved in the selection and introduction of software development tools, leading developers of such tools and well known authorities from the research community. The proceedings contain first-hand information on practical experiences and requirements, development directions and strategies, and key research issues and results.