by Fabrizio Fabbrini, Mario Fusani and Giuseppe Lami

History often repeats itself. In just a few years, the technical solutions for control software in the automobile industry have run through almost all the known stages of computer systems evolution. Progress has been extremely fast and the most advanced results in Software Engineering (SWE) and Telecommunications (TLC) are now finding their preferred deployment scenario within the automobile. This offers new services both to the driver and the passenger - but how much of this is good news?

by Gerhard Chroust

Certain types of information systems tackled today (so-called 'wicked systems') mean it is necessary to make some initial assumptions about the system architecture before even starting with the actual conceptualization. In general these assumptions define the architecture of the system only on a very high level, but with today's time and money restrictions, it is generally unfeasible or too costly to later change them. These assumptions can be classified into different dimensions using the concept of 'dichotomic architectural alternatives'. Here we discuss implications for the resulting system properties.

by Lars Rasmusson

What would computing be like if we had a virtually infinite pool of computing power at our fingertips? And how would we go about creating such a pool? These and other related questions are the subject of research at SICS.

by László Kovács and Máté Pataki

The aim of the National Cancer Registry GRID project (Országos Rákregiszter GRID - ORG) is to develop the next generation of the National Cancer Registry (NCR) for Hungary. The NCR started operation in 1999, and its central mission is the collection, management, and analysis of medical data on people who have been diagnosed with malignant or neoplastic disease (cancer). The technology behind NCR is now outdated, and our goal is to create a modern distributed system with a user-friendly Web-based interface and secure data transfer.

by Oliver Heckmann

The Internet is a large network formed from 30,000 autonomous systems (AS), operated by thousands of Internet service providers (ISPs). While these ISPs compete with each other for customers and traffic, they must also cooperate and exchange traffic in order to maintain worldwide connectivity. In contrast to the traditional telecommunication markets, there are almost no central organisations in the Internet that enforce cooperation and regulate the market.