Invited Talks -- Quantum Challenges -- Stability of Approximation Algorithms for Hard Optimization Problems -- Algorithms on Compressed Strings and Arrays -- WWW Based Collaboration with the BSCW System -- Middleware and Quality of Service -- Dynamic Reconfiguration of CORBA-Based Applications -- Fast, Error Correcting Parser Combinators: A Short Tutorial -- IBM SanFrancisco: Java Based Business Components, and New Tools to Develop Applications -- Databases and the World Wide Web -- Exploiting Formality in Software Engineering -- Biomolecular Computing and Programming -- Software Change and Evolution -- Distributed Simulation with Cellular Automata: Architecture and Applications -- Supporting Group-By and Pipelining in Bitmap-Enabled Query Processors -- On Interactive Computation: Intelligent Tutoring Systems -- Coherent Concepts, Robust Learning -- Application of Artificial Neural Networks for Different Engineering Problems -- Factor Oracle: A New Structure for Pattern Matching -- Principles of Forecasting — A Short Overview -- Contributed Papers -- UPV-Curry: An Incremental Curry Interpreter -- Quantum Finite Multitape Automata -- Decomposable Bulk Synchronous Parallel Computers -- Component Change and Version Identification in SOFA -- Pattern Equations and Equations with Stuttering -- Garbage Collection for Mobile and Replicated Objects -- Randomized Gossiping by Packets in Faulty Networks -- Object-Oriented Specification with the Parallel Multi-Label-Selective ?-calculus -- Simulation Problems for One-Counter Machine -- On Semantics of Petri Nets Over Partial Algebra -- Towards Possibilistic Decision Functions with Minimum-Based Sugeno Integrals -- Quantum Finite One-Counter Automata -- A Performance Comparison of Mobile Agents and RPC -- Cyclic Cutwidth of the Mesh -- Some Afterthoughts on Hopfield Networks -- A persistent-Set Approach to Abstract State-Space Construction in Verification -- Computational Power of Neuroidal Nets -- Cellular Automata with Dynamically Reconfigurable Buses.

This year the SOFSEM conference is coming back to Milovy in Moravia to th be held for the 26 time. Although born as a local Czechoslovak event 25 years ago SOFSEM did not miss the opportunity oe red in 1989 by the newly found freedom in our part of Europe and has evolved into a full-?edged international conference. For all the changes, however, it has kept its generalist and mul- disciplinarycharacter.Thetracksofinvitedtalks,rangingfromTrendsinTheory to Software and Information Engineering, attest to this. Apart from the topics mentioned above, SOFSEM’99 oer s invited talks exploring core technologies, talks tracing the path from data to knowledge, and those describing a wide variety of applications. TherichcollectionofinvitedtalkspresentsonetraditionalfacetofSOFSEM: that of a winter school, in which IT researchers and professionals get an opp- tunity to see more of the large pasture of today’s computing than just their favourite grazing corner. To facilitate this purpose the prominent researchers delivering invited talks usually start with a broad overview of the state of the art in a wider area and then gradually focus on their particular subject.