WorkonthisvolumestartedwiththeLipariSummerSchoolonAdvancesinSo- ware Engineering, which the ?rst editor organizedtogether with Alfredo Ferro fromtheUniversityofCataniainJuly2007.Itwasthe19thinawell-knownse- 1 riesofannualinternationalschools,addressedatcomputerscienceresearchers. Thethemesofthecourses,offourone-hourlectureseach,rangedfromdomain andrequirementsengineering(DinesBjoerner,TechnicalUniversityofDenmark, and Florin Spanachi,SAP Research,Germany) over high-level modeling (Egon B.. orger, University of Pisa, Italy) and software product line techniques (Don Batory,UniversityofTexasatAustin,USA)toevolvablesoftware(PeterSestoft, Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University of Denmark) and the evolution of service-oriented software architectures (Carlo Ghezzi, Politecnico di Milano, Italy) in particular for Web services (Boualem Benatallah, University of New SouthWales,Australia)andthecrucialproblemofhowtoreachsecurity insuch evolvingdistributedsystems(DieterGollmann,TechnicalUniversityHamburg- Harburg,Germany).
In two seminars the theme of evolvable software was further developed by the presentationofnew techniques forsoftwaremanipulation with annotations in Java (Vincenzo Gervasi, University of Pisa) and for the code-bricks-based runtime composition of self-evolving programs (Antonio Cisternino, University ofPisa). For unforseeablepersonalcircumstances MichaelJackson(London)was - abletodeliverhislecturesasplanned.However,thisvolumecontainshisre?- tions on which directions software engineering should take to become a truly engineeringdiscipline. This book is not a proceedings volume, but a collection of research papers on themes treated in the school,written with the intent to produce a state-- the art compendium of recent advances in software engineering. However, the contributions re?ect the extensive discussions we had during the two weeks in Lipari. Allcontributions,writtenbetweenAugust2007andJanuary2008,havebeen reviewed,revisedandreviewedagainduringtheperiodFebruary-August2008. We thank the 21 reviewers for their considerable and very constructive work, althoughasusualtheyhavetoremainanonymous.Lastbutnotleastwethank theauthorsfortheircommitmenttothisvolume.