A complete lexicon of technical information, the Dictionary of Computer Science, Engineering, and Technology provides workable definitions, practical information, and enhances general computer science and engineering literacy. It spans various disciplines and industry sectors such as: telecommunications, information theory, and software and hardware systems. If you work with, or write about computers, this dictionary is the single most important resource you can put on your shelf.
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Written by an international team of over 80 contributors, this is the most comprehensive and easy-to-read reference of its kind. If you need to know the definition of anything related to computers you will find it in the Dictionary of Computer Science, Engineering, and Technology.

While previously available methodologies for software - like those published in the early days of object technology - claimed to be appropriate for every conceivable project, situational method engineering (SME) acknowledges that most projects typically have individual characteristics and situations. Thus, finding the most effective methodology for a particular project needs specific tailoring to that situation. Such a tailored software development methodology needs to take into account all the bits and pieces needed for an organization to develop software, including the software process, the input and output work products, the people involved, the languages used to describe requirements, design, code, and eventually also measures of success or failure.

The authors have structured the book into three parts. Part I deals with all the basic concepts, terminology and overall ideas underpinning situational method engineering. As a summary of this part, they present a formal meta-model that enables readers to create their own quality methods and supporting tools. In Part II, they explain how to implement SME in practice, i.e., how to find method components and put them together and how to evaluate the resulting method. For illustration, they also include several industry case studies of customized or constructed processes, highlighting the impact that high-quality engineered methods can have on the success of an industrial software development. Finally, Part III summarizes some of the more recent and forward-looking ideas.This book presents the first summary of the state of the art for SME. For academics, it provides a comprehensive conceptual framework and discusses new research areas. For lecturers, thanks to its step-by-step explanations from basics to the customization and quality assessment of constructed methods, it serves as a solid basis for comprehensive courses on the topic. For industry methodologists, it offers a reference guide on features and technologies to consider when developing in-house software development methods or customising and adopting off-the-shelf ones.

Computing as a discipline is maturing rapidly. However, with maturity often comes a plethora of subdisciplines, which, as time progresses, can become isolationist. The subdisciplines of modelling, metamodelling, ontologies and modelling languages within software engineering e.g. have, to some degree, evolved separately and without any underpinning formalisms. Introducing set theory as a consistent underlying formalism, Brian Henderson-Sellers shows how a coherent framework can be developed that clearly links these four, previously separate, areas of software engineering. In particular, he shows how the incorporation of a foundational ontology can be beneficial in resolving a number of controversial issues in conceptual modelling, especially with regard to the perceived differences between linguistic metamodelling and ontological metamodelling. An explicit consideration of domain-specific modelling languages is also included in his mathematical analysis of models, metamodels, ontologies and modelling languages. This encompassing and detailed presentation of the state-of-the-art in modelling approaches mainly aims at researchers in academia and industry. They will find the principled discussion of the various subdisciplines extremely useful, and they may exploit the unifying approach as a starting point for future research.

Over the last decade, Method Engineering, defined as the engineering discipline to design, construct and adapt methods, including supportive tools, has emerged as the research and application area for using methods for systems development. This book contains the papers from the IFIP Working Group 8.1 conference on Situational Method Engineering.

This is the eighth year that the Agent-Oriented Information Systems (AOIS) workshops have been held. Papers submitted to AOIS show an increase in quality and maturity as agent technology is being increasingly seen as a viable alternative for software and systems development. In AOIS, we focus on the application of agent technology in information systems development and explore the potential for facilitating the increased usage of agent technology in the creation of information systems in the widest sense. This year's workshops were held in conjunction with two major, international computing research conferences: the first, in May 2006, was affiliated with the AAMAS conference in Hakadote, Japan and chaired by Garcia, Ghose and Kolp. The second was held in conjunction with the international CAiSE conference held in Luxembourg (June 2006) and chaired by Bresciani, Henderson-Sellers and Mouratidis. (Details of all preceding workshops are to be found at http:// www. aois. org. ) The best papers from both these meetings were identified and authors invited to revise and extend their papers in light of the reviewers' comments and feedback at the workshop. Following submission to this compendium volume, another round of reviews was undertaken resulting in what you can read here. These re-reviews were undertaken by three members of the Programme Committee - we wish to thank both the authors for undertaking the necessary revisions and the reviewers for this extra call on their precious time.

This book contains the papers from the IFIP Working Group 8.1 conference on Situational Method Engineering. Over the last decade, Method Engineering, defined as the engineering discipline to design, construct and adapt methods, including supportive tools, has emerged as the research and application area for using methods for systems development.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 7th International Bi-Conference Workshop on Agent-Oriented Information Systems, AOIS 2005, held in Utrecht, Netherlands, in July 2005 and in Klagenfurt, Austria, in October 2005. The 19 revised full papers are organized in topical sections on agent behavior, communications and reasoning, methodologies and ontologies, agent-oriented software engineering, as well as applications.

Information systems have become the backbone of all kinds of organizations - day. In almost every sector - manufacturing, education, health care, government and businesses large and small - information systems are relied upon for - eryday work, communication, information gathering and decision-making. Yet, the in?exibilities in current technologies and methods have also resulted in poor performance, incompatibilities and obstacles to change. As many organizations are reinventing themselves to meet the challenges of global competition and e-commerce, there is increasing pressure to develop and deploy new technologies that are ?exible, robust and responsive to rapid and unexpected change. Agent concepts hold great promise for responding to the new realities of - formation systems. They o?er higher-level abstractions and mechanisms which address issues such as knowledge representation and reasoning, communication, coordination, cooperation among heterogeneous and autonomous parties, p- ception, commitments, goals, beliefs, intentions, etc., all of which need conc- tual modelling. On the one hand, the concrete implementation of these concepts can lead to advanced functionalities, e.g., in inference-based query answering, transaction control, adaptive work ?ows, brokering and integration of disparate information sources, and automated communication processes. On the other hand, their rich representational capabilities allow for more faithful and ?- ible treatments of complex organizational processes, leading to more e?ective requirements analysis and architectural/detailed design.

Thisproceedingsvolumeofthe5thAOISWorkshopisanopportunityforlooking back at ?ve years of organizing AOIS workshops. What did we achieve with the AOIS workshop series? Where were we ?ve years ago, where are we now? Did ourthemeimpactontheinformationsystems?eldinthewaythatwehadhoped for? AOIS workshops have taken place in Seattle, Heidelberg, Stockholm, Austin, Montr eal, Interlaken, Toronto, Bologna, Melbourne, and Chicago, always in c- junction with a major conference on either multiagent systems in arti?cial - telligence (AI/MAS) or information systems (IS). We have tried to innovate in holding these workshops as biconference events (each year AOIS held two wo- shop events, one at an AI/MAS conference and one at an IS conference), as well as using the AOIS web site as a medium for communication among researchers. So, certainly, we have reached a wide audience of researchers around the world from both the AI/MAS and IS communities. But did we also manage to build up a dedicated AOIS community? Five years ago, we wrote: "Agent concepts could fundamentally alter the nature of information systems of the future, and how we build them, much like structured analysis, ER modeling, and Object-Orientation has precipitated fundamental changes in IS practice. " Of course, a period of ?ve years is too short for evaluating the success or failure of a new scienti?c paradigm. But still we may observe that while most IS conferences meanwhile list agents as one of their many preferred topics, agent-orientation is generally not considered to be a fundamental IS paradigm.