This proceedings contains some of the papers presented at the Business Object and Implementation Workshops held at OOPSLA'96, OOPSLA'97 and OOPSLA'98. The main theme of the workshops is to document the evolution of business objects, from ~any perspectives, including modelling, implementation, standards and applications. The 1996 workshop intended to clarify the specification, design, and implementation of interoperable, plug and play, distributed business object components and their suitability for delivery of enterprise applications; and to assess the impact of the WWW and, more specifically, the Intranet on the design and implementation of business object components. The main focus of the workshop was: What design patterns will allow implementation of business objects as plug and play components? How can these components be assembled into domain specific frameworks? What are the appropriate architectures/mechanisms as distributed object systems? What for implementing these frameworks organisational and development process issues need to be addressed to successfully deliver these systems? Is this approach an effective means for deploying enterprise application solutions? The third annual workshop (OOPSLA'97) was jointly sponsored by the Accredited Standards Committee X3H7 Object Information Management Technical Committee and the Object Management Group (OMG) Business Object Domain Task Force (BODTF) for the purpose of soliciting technical position papers relevant to the design and implementation of Business Object Systems.

Over the past 10 years, object technology has gained widespread acceptance within the software industry. Within a wider context, however, it has made little impact on the core applications which support businesses in carrying out their tasks. This volume contains a collection of papers establishing the need for Business Objects, with particular reference to work undertaken by the Object Management Group (OMG). The emphasis is on defining an agenda for establishing Business Object standards and architectures, for developing software technology to support Business Objects applications and managing object oriented development projects. The wide variety of papers presented, and their authors' expertise, make this book a significant contribution to the development of Business Objects and their management.