Preface Volume 65, Issue 7

AbstractThis volume contains the Proceedings of the International Workshop Validation and Implementation of Scenario-based Specifications (VISS'2002) that was held as satellite event of the 5th European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software (ETAPS'2002) in Grenoble, France, April 7th, 2002.There is a strong need within systems engineering and software development to improve software design by applying general and flexible tools. Formal tools for describing systems are required for increasing the efficiency of the design process through automated error analysis, integration of specifications into existing tools, and automatical generation of intermediate descriptions.Graphical specification formalisms exhibit an increasing popularity in software development for industrial applications. The prototype of scenario-based, graphical languages is the ITU standardized notation of message sequence charts (MSC). Used for capturing early system requirements, MSCs are particularly suited for designing and validating distributed, reactive systems, in particular telecommunication protocols.The aim of the workshop is to gather a larger community of researchers interested in scenario-based notations for designing distributed systems and to outline new trends and problems in the field.The papers in this volume were reviewed by members of the programme committee: •Benoît Caillaud (IRISA, Rennes) co-chair•Kousha Etessami (Bell Labs, NJ)•Loïc Hélouët (FT R&D, Lannion)•Ferhat Khendek (Concordia, Montréal)•Ingolf Krüger (TUM, Munich)•Anca Muscholl (LIAFA, Paris) chair•Madhavan Mukund (Chennai Math. Inst., Chennai)•Doron Peled (Bell Labs, NJ)•Daniel Vincent (FT R&D, Lannion)We are very grateful to Manfred Broy (TU Munich) and Doron Peled (Texas at Austin) for their enlightening surveys. We also acknowledge the very efficient organization provided by the ETAPS'2002 local committee, in particular the assistance of Susanne Graf. Thanks are also due to IRISA/INRIA at Rennes, France, which has supplied the financial support.May 15th, 2002 Benoît Caillaud and Anca Muschol