Object Utopia -- Automating the evolution of object-oriented systems -- Using C++ templates to implement role-based designs -- Explicit metaclasses as a tool for improving the design of class libraries -- Beyond design by contract: Towards formally provable object-oriented software -- Static typing -- ICC++ - A C++ dialect for high performance parallel computing -- Hierarchical collections: An efficient scheme to build an object-oriented distributed class library for massively parallel computation -- Adaptive parameter passing -- Designing a meta object protocol to wrap a standard graphical toolkit -- Avoiding confusion in metacircularity: The meta-helix -- An algebraic semantics of reflective objects -- A meme media architecture for fine-grain component software -- A metric for evaluating effectiveness of object-oriented interface abstraction for promoting software reuse -- An experiment in classification and specialization of synchronization schemes -- Synergies between object-oriented programming language design and implementation research -- Ocore and VAST — Integrating persistence into a parallel object-oriented language -- A metaobject protocol for controlling file cache management -- Subtyping by constraints in object-oriented databases.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Object Technologies for Advanced Software, ISOTAS'96, held in Ishikawa, Japan, in March 1996. ISOTAS'96 was sponsored by renowned Japanese and international professional organisations. The 14 papers included in final full versions, together with the abstracts of four invited papers, were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 56 submissions; they address most current topics in object software technology, object-oriented programming, object-oriented databases, etc. The volume is organized in sections on design and evolution, parallelism and distribution, meta and reflection, and evolution of reuse.