Computing in the Nordic countries started in late 1940s mainly as an engineering activity to build computing devices to perform mathematical calculations and assist mathematicians and engineers in scientific problem solving. The early computers of the Nordic countries emerged during the 1950s and had names like BARK, BESK, DASK, SMIL, SARA, ESKO, and NUSSE. Each of them became a nucleus in institutes and centres for mathematical computations programmed and used by highly qualified professionals. However, one should not forget the punched-card machine technology at this time that had existed for several decades. In addition, we have a Nordic name, namely Frederik Rosing Bull, contributing to the fundaments of punched card technology and forming the French company Bull. Commercial products such as FACIT EDB and SAAB D20-series computers in Sweden, the Danish GIER computer, the Nokia MIKKO computer in Finland, as well as the computers of Norsk Data in Norway followed the early computers. In many cases, however, companies and institutions did not further develop or exploit Nordic computing hardware, even though it exhibited technical advantages. Consequently, in the 1970s, US computers, primarily from IBM, flooded the Nordic market.

In 2013, the International Conference on Advance Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE) turns 25. Initially launched in 1989, for all these years the conference has provided a broad forum for researchers working in the area of Information Systems Engineering. To reflect on the work done so far and to examine prospects for future work, the CAiSE Steering Committee decided to present a selection of seminal papers published for the conference during these years and to ask their authors, all prominent researchers in the field, to comment on their work and how it has developed over the years.

The scope of the papers selected covers a broad range of topics related to modeling and designing information systems, collecting and managing requirements, and with special attention to how information systems are engineered towards their final development and deployment as software components.With this approach, the book provides not only a historical analysis on how information systems engineering evolved over the years, but also a fascinating social network analysis of the research community. Additionally, many inspiring ideas for future research and new perspectives in this area are sparked by the intriguing comments of the renowned authors.

In 2013, the International Conference on Advance Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE) turns 25. Initially launched in 1989, for all these years the conference has provided a broad forum for researchers working in the area of Information Systems Engineering. To reflect on the work done so far and to examine prospects for future work, the CAiSE Steering Committee decided to present a selection of seminal papers published for the conference during these years and to ask their authors, all prominent researchers in the field, to comment on their work and how it has developed over the years. The scope of the papers selected covers a broad range of topics related to modeling and designing information systems, collecting and managing requirements, and with special attention to how information systems are engineered towards their final development and deployment as software components. With this approach, the book provides not only a historical analysis on how information systems engineering evolved over the years, but also a fascinating social network analysis of the research community. Additionally, many inspiring ideas for future research and new perspectives in this area are sparked by the intriguing comments of the renowned authors.

The fourth international conference on Extending Data Base Technology was held in Cambridge, UK, in March 1994. The biannual EDBT has established itself as the premier European database conference. It provides an international forum for the presentation of new extensions to database technology through research, development, and application. This volume contains the scientific papers of the conference. Following invited papers by C.M. Stone and A. Herbert, it contains 31 papers grouped into sections on object views, intelligent user interface, distributed information servers, transaction management, information systems design and evolution, semantics of extended data models, accessing new media, join algorithms, query optimization, and multimedia databases.