This book contains the best papers of the 8th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2006), held in the city of Paphos (Cyprus), organized by the Institute for Systems and Technologies of Information, Control and Communication (INSTICC) in collaboration with the University of Cyprus, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and Athens University of Economics and Business. ICEIS has become a major point of contact between research scientists, engineers and practitioners in the area of business applications of information systems. This year, five simultaneous tracks were held, covering different aspects related to enterprise computing, including: "Databases and Information Systems Integration," "Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Systems," "Information Systems Analysis and Specification," "Software Agents and Internet Computing" and "Human-Computer Interaction." All tracks focus on real world applications and highlight the benefits of Information Systems and Technology for industry and services, thus making a bridge between Academia and Enterprise. Following the success of 2005, ICEIS 2006 received 404 paper submissions from more than 40 countries spanning all continents. In all, 63 papers were published and presented as full papers, i.e., completed work (8 pages in proceedings / 30-min oral presentations), 102 papers reflecting work-in-progress or position papers were accepted for short presentation and another 75 for poster presentation.

Digital libraries (DLs) are major advances in information technology that frequently fall short of expectations [7, 28]. Covi & Kling [7] argue that understanding the wider context of technology use is essential to understanding digital library use and its - plementation in different social worlds. Recent health informatics research also - gues that social and organisational factors can determine the success or failure of healthcare IT developments [8, 11, 12]. Heathfield [11] suggests that this is due to the complex, autonomous nature of the medical discipline and the specialized (clinician or software engineer) approach to system development. Negative reactions to these systems is often due to inappropriate system design and poor implementation. H- ever, there may be other less obvious social and political repercussions of information system design and deployment. Symon et al [26] have identified, within a hospital scenario, how social structures and work practices can be disrupted by technology implementation. Although these systems often deal with sensitive, personal infor- tion, other system design research has found that apparently innocuous data can be perceived as a threat to social and political stability [1,2,3]. To understand the impact of DLs within the medical profession, an in-depth evaluation is required of the int- duction and later development of these applications within their specific social and organisational settings. However, as Covi & Kling [7] have highlighted, there are few high-level theories that aid designers in understanding the implication of these issues for DL design and implementation.

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.