2 I CS2002wasthesecondworkshoponInnovativeInternetComputingSystems, a series of international workshops on system and information management for 2 theNextGenerationInternet(NGI).TheworkshopseriescommencedwithI CS 2001, which was held at the Technical University of Ilmenau. It brought - gether scientists whose research addressed di?erent aspects of Internet-based and network-centric computing. This year's workshop was held in the inspiring atmosphereoftheoldBalticSearesortofKuhlung .. bornnearRostock(Germany). Theunprecedentedpervasivenessofnetworkaccessandtheassociatedem- gence of large distributed computing infrastructures have presented researchers with new challenges in Information and Web technology. The management and retrieval of web-based information, the classi?cation of contents, and the m- agementofweb-basedcommunitiesaresomeofthekeyareasaddressedbysome of this year's contributions. Other papers focus on the structure and retrieval ofinformationfrom largedistributed data basesaswell asthe representationof the distributed natureofinformationbythe meansofgraph-theoreticalmodels. 2 Like I CS 2001, this year's workshop was organized by the Gesellschaft fur ..
Informatik(GI)inGermanytosupporttheexchangeofexperiences,results, and technology in the ?eld. The 21 papers (2 invited, 19 regular contributions) presented at the conference and in the present volume were selected from more than30submissions.Everysubmissionwascarefullyreviewedbythreemembers of the programcommittee. Wewouldliketothankallthosewhocontributedtothisbookfortheirexc- lent work and their great cooperation. Roswitha Fengler and Katrin Erdmann deserve special gratitude for their great e?orts and perfect work concerning all administrativemattersoftheworkshop.Wewishtoacknowledgethesubstantial helpprovidedbyoursponsors:theUniversityofRostockandtheTKKTechniker KrankenkasseRostock. We hope all participants enjoyed a successful workshop, made a lot of new contacts,held fruitful discussions helping to solvethe actualresearchproblems, and had a pleasant stay on the coast of the Baltic Sea. Last but not least we 2 hope to see you again at the third I CS conference in 2003, which will be held in the Leipzig area in the heart of Germany.