Guest Editorial

Dear Readers,

Bertrand Meyer Guest editor

The TOOLS USA 2003 conference was number 44 in the series and, like its predecessors, attracted a high number of quality submissions. Due to unfortunate circumstances the conference could not be held in the traditional form, but the present special issue of JOT brings to the object-oriented and component-based public the best papers submitted to the conference, made available here in journal form after revision.

The papers emphasize some of the most important themes of the moment: component-based development, methodology, applications, with a special batch of contributions on new ideas in Design by Contract and the Eiffel approach.

We are grateful to the authors for submitting these contributions and waiting patiently for final publication, and for Michael Stal for directing the paper review process. The TOOLS conference series will resume in 2005 and we hope to see many more submissions of such interesting contributions.

Bertrand Meyer

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