CASCON

Welcome to CASCON '93 -- Working Together. The theme of this year's conference is very appropriate, especially given today's business and economic environment. As an increasing number of businesses and organizations are faced with tough cost-cutting decisions, it is more important than ever to look for ways to utilize our resources more effectively -- leveraging our skills, knowledge and expertise by working together.The IBM Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS)is based on this strategy, successfully bringing together research experts from around the world -- more than 200 to date -- to collectively focus on key issues facing the software industry today ... and into the future.CASCON '93 is a demonstration of this strategy in action -- visible in the nearly 70 technology demos and the numerous research presentations and workshops you will have a chance to participate in throughout the conference.CASCON '93 -- Working Together marks three years of cooperative research activities between the Toronto Lab's Centre for Advance Studies and researchers from leading Canadian, U. S. and European universities. I am proud to say that CAS has lived up to its expectations, taking on a leadership role in the software industry -- building an extensive network of international experts applying their knowledge and experience to key issues facing the industry today.To date, three projects have moved from CAS back into our product development area, eight joint patents have been filed and resultant products are expected to be delivered to the marketplace in the near future.Throughout the next few days, you will hear from a number of our research partners and you will have the opportunity to view the nearly 70 technology demos that represent the results of their collective efforts. I urge you to spend time viewing the demos, talking to the experts and attending as many of the presentations as you can. I would also encourage you to participate in the technology workshops that have been scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday at the Radisson Hotel. This is your opportunity to discuss, in an open forum, key issues and challenges facing the information technology industry.I would also like to welcome the National Research Council of Canada as the co-sponsor of this year's conference. By working together we were able to expand the scope of CASCON '93 to include the participation of leading Canadian and U. S. software organizations. Their technologies are also represented in a number of the demos here today.Welcome to CASCON '93 ! This conference, our third, is co-sponsored with NRC and emphasizes "Working Together, " successfully bridging the gap between the software industry and the research community.In response to the Call for Papers, we received about 126 research papers. The program committee members considered all the papers carefully and each paper was reviewed by at least three reviewers. The review criteria were: technical quality, originality, clarity of presentation, and relevance to CASCON.Our program at the Ontario Science Centre is by design a one-track program where all participants can hear from the many distinguished speakers about their views on the software industry. The main component of the technical program for these two days is the presentation of 17 carefully selected contributed papers of high quality.The main component of Days Four and Five are 16 workshops on selected topics in Quality Engineering, Testing, Broadband Services, Software Integration, Challenges in Deploying Distributed Systems, Parallel Databases, Languages and Compiler Issues for Distributed Memory Machines, New Business Opportunities, Transfer of Technology, Software Evolution, C++ Compiler-Based Development Environments, Software Architecture, Data Integration and Multidatabase Systems, Commercializing Software, Documentation and Interfaces, and Software Development Processes.