Towrite aprefacemeansthat wehave reachedtheendofthislongway, and that in
some way all the incidences and problems have been overcome. We can now
say that it is really a big pleasure for us to welcome all of you to the
proceedings of CAiSE 2005 which was held in Porto. CAiSE 2005 was the
seventeenth in the series of International Conferences on Advanced
Information Systems. Enforcing its tradition, since the late 1990s the
CAiSE conferences have provided a forum for the presentation and
exchange of research results and practical experiences within the ?eld
of advanced infor- tionsystemsengineering.In2005,
theconferencewashostedbytheFaculdadede Engenharia da Universidade do
Porto, Portugal, going back to southern Europe, in particular to the
Iberian peninsula, where CAiSE 1997 was held in Barcelona. The
conference theme of CAiSE 2005 was "Improving Communication and
Understanding - Systems and Citizens." Behind this theme, we ?nd the
fact that the Internet has been changing societies and economies, and
the way - stitutions and businesses operate has evolved rapidly. Most
citizens are now - pected to interact directly with technology-based
systems without direct human intermediation,
usingdi?erentinterfaceappliances.Moreover, manyinformation systems
interact with each other with limited human supervision. The Internet
and its infrastructure play a critical role in this evolution, and it is
of the utmost importance that semantic aspects are taken into
consideration on a sound basis.