Preface

Software is the essential enabler for science and the new economy. It creates new markets and new directions for a more reliable, flexible and robust society. It empowers the exploration of our world in ever more depth. However, software often falls short of our expectations. Current software methodologies, tools, and techniques remain expensive and are not yet sufficiently reliable for a constantly changing and evolving market, and many promising approaches have proved to be no more than case-by-case oriented methods.

This book explores new trends and theories which illuminate the direction of developments in this field, developments which we believe will lead to a transformation of the role of software and science integration in tomorrow's global information society. By discussing issues ranging from research practices and techniques and methodologies, to proposing and reporting solutions needed for global world business, it offers an opportunity for the software science community to think about where we are today and where we are going.

The book aims to capture the essence of a new state of the art in software science and its supporting technology, and to identify the challenges that such a technology will have to master. It contains extensively reviewed papers presented at the eighth International Conference on New Trends in software Methodology Tools, and Techniques, (SoMeT_09) held in Prague, Czech Republic, with the collaboration of Czech Technical University, from September 23rd to 25th 2009. (http://www.action-m.com/ somet_2009/).

This conference brought together researchers and practitioners to share their original research results and practical development experience in software science and related new technologies.

This volume participates in the conference the SoMeT series

Previous related events that contributed to this publication are: SoMeT_02 (the Sorbonne, Paris, October 3rd to 5th 2002); SoMeT_03 (Stockholm, Sweden); SoMeT_04 (Leipzig, Germany); SoMeT_05 (Tokyo, Japan); SoMeT_06 (Quebec, Canada); SoMeT_07 (Rome, Italy); SoMeT_08 (Sharjah, UAE) and SoMeT_09 (Prague, Czech Republic). This series of conferences will be continued with SoMeT 10 in Japan from September 29th to October 1st 2010.

, of which it forms a part, by providing an opportunity for exchanging ideas and experiences in the field of software technology; opening up new avenues for software development, methodologies, tools, and techniques, especially with regard to software security and programme coding diagnosis and aspects of related software maintenance techniques. The emphasis has been placed on human-centric software methodologies, end-user development techniques, and emotional reasoning, for an optimally harmonised performance between the design tool and the user.

This book, and the series it forms part of, will continue to contribute to and elaborate on new trends and related academic research studies and developments in SoMeT_2010 in Japan.

A major goal of this work was to assemble the work of scholars from the international research community to discuss and share research experiences of new software methodologies and techniques. One of the important issues addressed is the handling of cognitive issues in software development to adapt it to the user's mental state. Tools and techniques related to this aspect form part of the contribution to this book. Another subject raised at the conference was intelligent software design in software security and programme conversions. The book also investigates other comparable theories and practices in software science, including emerging technologies, from their computational foundations in terms of models, methodologies, and tools. This is essential for a comprehensive overview of information systems and research projects, and to assess their practical impact on real-world software problems. This represents another milestone in mastering the new challenges of software and its promising technology, addressed by the SoMeT conferences, and provides the reader with new insights, inspiration and concrete material to further the study of this new technology.

The book is a collection of 41 carefully refereed papers selected by the reviewing committee and covering:

• Software engineering aspects of software security programmes, diagnosis and maintenance

• Static and dynamic analysis of software performance models

• Software security aspects and networking

• Practical artefacts of software security, software validation and diagnosis

• Software optimization and formal methods

• Requirement engineering and requirement elicitation

• Software methodologies and related techniques

• Automatic software generation, re-coding and legacy systems

• Software quality and process assessment

• Intelligent software systems and evolution

• End-user requirement engineering, programming environment for Web applications

• Ontology and philosophical aspects on software engineering

• Cognitive Software and human behavioural analysis in software design.

All papers published in this book have been carefully reviewed, on the basis of technical soundness, relevance, originality, significance, and clarity, by up to four reviewers. They were then revised on the of the review reports before being selected by the SoMeT international reviewing committee.

This book is the result of a collective effort from many industrial partners and colleagues throughout the world. We would like to thank Iwate Prefectural University, in particular the President, Prof. Yoshihisa Nakamura; SANGIKYO Co., especially the president Mr. M. Sengoku; the Czech Technical University of Prague (Czech Republic); ARISES of Iwate Prefectural University and all the others who have contributed their invaluable support to this work. Most especially, we thank the reviewing committee and all those who participated in the rigorous reviewing process and the lively discussion and evaluation meetings which led to the selected papers which appear in this book. Last and not least, we would also like to thank the Microsoft Conference Management Tool team for their expert guidance on the use of the Microsoft CMT System as a conference-support tool during all the phases of SoMeT.

The Editors