Despite decades of research, developing software that is fit for purpose, developed on time, and within budget remains a challenge. Many researchers have advocated the use of artificial intelligence techniques such as knowledge-based systems, neural networks, and data mining as a way of addressing these difficulties.

In recent years, the emerging field of agent technologies has become mainstream in Web engineering. With constant field developments and updates, a reference source is needed that reflects the increased scope of agent technology application domains and development practices and tools.

Corporations across the globe are increasingly considering the importance of user experience and business process design in creation of Web information systems.

Numerous real-life problems so complex as to be virtually insoluble by means of traditional computer science techniques can now be approached effectively with artificial intelligence techniques. Recently, artificial intelligence technologies have evolved at a rapid pace, raising significant challenges to the effort to stay current.

Large investments have been made by various governments for the deployment of broadband within their respective nations; however, the citizens of such countries have demonstrated a slow adoption of this technology.

After the mainframe and personal computer eras, the third major era in computer science, ubiquitous computing, describes the state of technology in which networked computers would surround every user.

While the current Web provides access to an enormous amount of information, it is currently only human-readable. In response to this problem, the Semantic Web allows for explicit representation of the Semantics of data so that it is machine interpretable.