Dear JOT readers:
This special issue of JOT serves as proceedings for the TOOLS EUROPE 2007 conference, which was held in Zurich from 24 to 28 June 2007.
TOOLS EUROPE is devoted to the combination of technologies that have emerged as a result of object technology becoming "mainstream". Like its predecessors, TOOLS EUROPE 2007 combined an emphasis on quality with a strong practical focus.
This was the 45th edition of the TOOLS conference. Started in 1989, TOOLS conferences, held in Europe, the USA , Australia , China and Eastern Europe , have played a major role in the development of object technology field. Many of the seminal concepts were first presented at TOOLS. After an interruption of four years, the conference has now been revived to reflect the maturing of the field and the new challenges ahead.
Contributions cover all aspects of object technology and neighbouring fields, in particular model-driven engineering, component-based development, advanced software architectures and patterns.
All contributions were subjected to a rigorous selection process by the international Program Committee, with a stress on originality, practicality and overall quality. TOOLS is committed to a fair and extensive peer-review process establishing a high standard in the area of modern practices in software engineering. The resulting technical program reflects the wide submission spectrums as well as the hard selection work the Program Committee. As announced, we are publishing the acceptance rate: 30% (24 accepted out of 78 submitted and not withdrawn).
We hope that this special TOOLS issue of JOT provides a better understanding of advanced software engineering techniques, of the dynamics of our industry, and of the prospects raised by its new developments. We hope also that, like the results of previous TOOLS, it will produce innovative and influential ideas in object technology and the technologies that follow it.
If you enjoy this issue, you will definitely enjoy participating in the conference. TOOLS Europe 2008 is already announced and will take place in the first week of July. Make sure to read the announcement and calls for contributions at http://tools.ethz.ch.
