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 the integration of science into tomorrow's global information society. By discussing issues ranging from research practices and techniques and methodologies, to proposing and reporting the solutions demanded by 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 ninth International Conference on New Trends in software Methodology Tools, and Techniques, (SoMeT_11) held in Saint Petersburg, Russia with the collaboration of Saint Petersburg University from September 28–30, 2011. (http://www.somet.soft.iwate-pu.ac.jp/somet_11/). This round of SoMeT11 celebrates the 10th anniversary

Previous related events that contributed to this publication are: SoMeT_02 (the Sorbonne, Paris, 2002); SoMeT_03 (Stockholm, Sweden, 2003); SoMeT_04 (Leipzig, Germany, 2004); SoMeT_05 (Tokyo, Japan, 2005); SoMeT_06 (Quebec, Canada, 2006); SoMeT_07 (Rome, Italy, 2007); SoMeT_08 (Sharjah, UAE, 2008); SoMeT_09 (Prague, Czech Republic, 2009) and SoMeT_10 (Yokohama, Japan, 2010).

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 and the SoMeT series of which it forms a part, by providing an opportunity for the exchange of 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. Particular 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.

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 carefully selected papers refereed 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

• Agile software and lean methods

• 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 design and evolution

• Artificial Intelligence Techniques on Software Engineering, and Requirement Engineering

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

• Ontology, cognitive models and philosophical aspects on software design

• Business oriented software application models

• Model Driven Development (DVD), code centric to model centric 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 basis of the review reports before being selected by the SoMeT_11 international reviewing committee.

This book is the result of a collective effort from many industrial partners and colleagues throughout the world. I would like acknowledge my gratitude to JSPS (Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science) and SANGIKYO Co., for the sponsorship and support. Also, my thanks go to Iwate Prefectural University, Saint Petersburg University, and all those who have contributed their invaluable support to this work. Most especially, I want to take this opportunity to thank the reviewing committee and all those who participated in the rigorous reviewing process and the lively discussion and evaluation meetings which resulted in the selected papers which appear in this book. Last and not least, I 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_11.

The editors