This landmark volume represents the culmination of over 40 years of research in the use of logic as a basis for representing and manipulating problems in the field of artificial intelligence. The use of logic as a basis for commonsense reasoning was started by John McCarthy in 1959. The collection consists of both original research and...

For developers of computer-based systems, capturing and understanding the complex functional requirements and behaviour of software components has come to represent a considerable challenge. This book aims to equip readers with skills and techniques which will help them to address this challenge. It does so by stressing the value of...

Human computation is a new and evolving research area that centers around harnessing human intelligence to solve computational problems that are beyond the scope of existing Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms. With the growth of the Web, human computation systems can now leverage the abilities of an unprecedented number of people via the...

BIS 2011 held in Pozna´n, Poland, was the 14th in a series of international conferences on business information systems. The BIS conference series has been recognized by professionals from the very beginning as a forum for the exchange and dissemination of topical research in the development, implementation, application and...

Ad hoc and sensor networks continue to have a growing impact on communication. These cost-effective wireless networks provide location independent computing in environments ranging from military battlefields to in-home patient monitoring systems. However, having real-time connectivity to critical information over an open...

This is a research monograph intended primarily for those researchers in Theoretical Computer Science interested in the areas of logics of programs, programming language semantics and program verification. It is also aimed at mathematically-inclined researchers in Logic, Linguistics and Philosophy, interested in a well-motivated...

The 16th edition of the International Conference on Reliable Software Technologies – Ada-Europe 2011—took place in the John McIntyre Conference Centre, Edinburgh (UK). Previous editions of the conference were held in Switzerland (Montreux 1996 and Geneva 2007), United Kingdom (London 1997 and York 2005), Sweden (Uppsala...

FASE (Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering) is concerned with the foundations on which software engineering is built. Its focus is on novel techniques and the way in which they contribute to making software engineering a more mature and soundly based discipline. This year, we particularly encouraged contributions that combine the...

Historically, computer security is related to both cryptography and access control in operating systems. Cryptography, although mostly applied in the military and diplomacy, was used to protect communication channels and storage facilities (especially the backups). In the seventies there was a breakthrough in cryptography - the...

This book presents current methods for dealing with software reliability, illustrating the advantages and disadvantages of each method. The description of the techniques is intended for a non-expert audience with some minimal technical background. It also describes some advanced techniques, aimed at researchers and practitioners in software...

Despite means of fault prevention such as extensive testing or formal verification, errors inevitably occur during system operation. To avoid subsequent system failures, critical distributed systems, therefore, require engineering of means for fault tolerance. Achieving fault tolerance requires some redundancy, which, unfortunately,...