New Directions in Software Engineering : Liber Amicorum Maurice Verhelst

The Internet is radically changing the ways in which enterprises interact with each other in value networks. However, today's existing software technology doesn't adequately address the need to create highly complex interactions among multiple business partners. The arrival of web services promises to bring changes in current Internet technology.

Web services are self-contained, self-describing, modular applications that can be published, located and invoked across the web. They perform functions that can be anything from simple requests to complicated business processes. Using web services, an information system will be able to communicate much more easily with a partner's information system than in the past. Web services provide the technical foundation that companies need, to adopt the new operating style required by a dynamic business world: 'plug-and-play e-business'.By plug-and-play', we mean that companies can integrate themselves seamlessly into each other's businesses with little or no software efforts and without the protracted business cycles of the past in order to meet customers demands.

But what technology should be used for implementing web services? The editors believe objects, component-based development and software re-use are key parts of the software engineering approach onto which web services are to be built.

This liber amicorum is written in honour of Prof.M. Verhelst who has many years of experience in software engineering.