USM 2000 is the third event in a series of international IFIP/GI conferences on Trends in Distributed Systems. Following the venues in Aachen, Germany (1996) and Hamburg, Germany (1998), this event in Munich considers the trend towards a Universal Service Market – USM 2000. The trend towards a universal service market has many origins, e.g., the integration of telecom and data communications, the deregulation e?orts with respect to telco markets, the globalization of information, the virtualization of companies, the requirement of a short time-to-market, the advances in network technologies, the increasing acceptance of e-commerce, and the increase in - bility. This leads to new business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customer (B2C) environments that o?er both challenges and opportunities to enterprises and end-users. There is the need for ubiquitous services, trading, brokering and information management, for service market and business models, and for ?e- ble infrastructures for dynamic collaboration. Researchers, service vendors, and users must cooperate to set up the app- priate requirements for a universal service market and to ?nd solutions with respect to supporting platforms, middleware, distributed applications, and m- agement. The basis for these solution is a common understanding of means for de?ning, creating, implementing, and deploying the service market. Then, s- vice market makers, service aggregators, service auctioneers, ISP, ASP, BPO, and customers can freely interact in a dynamic, open, and universal market place.

USM 2000 is the third event in a series of international IFIP/GI conferences on Trends in Distributed Systems. Following the venues in Aachen, Germany (1996) and Hamburg, Germany (1998), this event in Munich considers the trend towards a Universal Service Market – USM 2000. The trend towards a universal service market has many origins, e.g., the integration of telecom and data communications, the deregulation e?orts with respect to telco markets, the globalization of information, the virtualization of companies, the requirement of a short time-to-market, the advances in network technologies, the increasing acceptance of e-commerce, and the increase in - bility. This leads to new business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customer (B2C) environments that o?er both challenges and opportunities to enterprises and end-users. There is the need for ubiquitous services, trading, brokering and information management, for service market and business models, and for ?e- ble infrastructures for dynamic collaboration. Researchers, service vendors, and users must cooperate to set up the app- priate requirements for a universal service market and to ?nd solutions with respect to supporting platforms, middleware, distributed applications, and m- agement. The basis for these solution is a common understanding of means for de?ning, creating, implementing, and deploying the service market. Then, s- vice market makers, service aggregators, service auctioneers, ISP, ASP, BPO, and customers can freely interact in a dynamic, open, and universal market place.

Although parallel robots are known to offer many advantages with respect to accuracy, dynamics, and stiffness, major breakthroughs in industrial applications have not yet taken place. This is due to a knowledge gap preventing fast and precise execution of industrial handling and assembly tasks. This book focuses on the design, modeling, and control of innovative parallel structures as well as the integration of novel machine elements. Special attention is paid to the integration of active components into lightweight links and passive joints. In addition, new control concepts are introduced to minimize structural vibrations. Although the optimization of robot systems itself allows a reduction of cycle times, these can be further decreased by improved path planning, robot programming, and automated assembly planning concepts described by 25 contributions within this book. The content of this volume is subdivided into four main parts dealing with Modeling and Design, System Implementation, Control and Programming as well as Adaptronics and Components. This book is aimed at researchers and postgraduates working in the field of parallel robots as well as practicing engineers dealing with industrial robot development and robotic applications.

The functionality of distributed computing systems has advanced greatly in recent months, and staying abreast of the latest research within the field is difficult. Technology Integration Advancements in Distributed Systems and Computing offers a vital compendium of research and developments within the field of distributed computing, giving case studies, frameworks, architectures, and best practices for academics and practitioners alike. With authors from around the world and the latest research from experts within the field, this resource acts as both a reference guide and research handbook.

Distributed applications are a necessity in most central application sectors of the contemporary information society, including e-commerce, e-banking, e-learning, e-health, telecommunication and transportation. This results from a tremendous growth of the role that the Internet plays in business, administration and our everyday activities. This trend is going to be even further expanded in the context of advances in broadband wireless communication. New Developments in Distributed Applications and Interoperable Systems focuses on the techniques available or under development with the goal to ease the burden of constructing reliable and maintainable interoperable information systems providing services in the global communicating environment. The topics covered in this book include: Context-aware applications; Integration and interoperability of distributed systems; Software architectures and services for open distributed systems; Management, security and quality of service issues in distributed systems; Software agents and mobility; Internet and other related problem areas. The book contains the proceedings of the Third International Working Conference on Distributed Applications and Interoperable Systems (DAIS'2001), which was held in September 2001 in Kraków, Poland, and sponsored by the International Federation on Information Processing (IFIP). The conference program presents the state of the art in research concerning distributed and interoperable systems. This is a topical research area where much activity is currently in progress. Interesting new aspects and innovative contributions are still arising regularly. The DAIS series of conferences is one of the main international forums where these important findings are reported.

This report examines the issues associated with distributed computing. Topics include: core elements of distributed computing; client/server architectures; messaging and middleware; worldwide access; system and network management; and future trends in distributed computing.