"This book is aimed at researchers and practitioners involved in designing and managing complex multimedia information systems"--Provided by publisher.

Papers were invited based on their quality, relevance and significance, and the - ability of extending their results. Extended versions prepared by authors were subject to the traditional two-round scholarly review process, and the authors were required to respond to all concerns expressed by the reviewers before papers were accepted. Eight papers were eventually accepted for publication in this issue. The selection of SWESE best papers eventually resulted in the acceptance of two papers. The first paper “Experiences in the Design of Semantic Services Using Web En- neering Methods and Tools,” by Brambilla, Ceri, Celino, Cerizza, Della Valle, Facca, Turati, and Tzviskou, shows how classical software engineering methods (such as formal business process development and automatic code generation) combine with semantic methods and tools (i.e., ontology engineering, semantic service annotation and discovery) to forge a new approach to software development for the Semantic Web. In the paper, the authors present their experience in the participation to the - mantic Web Service Challenge 2006, where the proposed approach achieved very good results in solving the proposed problems. The second paper “Automatically Generated Model Transformations Using Ont- ogy Engineering Space,” by Roser and Bauer, presents an approach to using the - mantic technologies to improve cross-organizational modeling by automated gene- tion of model transformations. By automated generation of mappings it offers new possibilities for the integration of domain specific languages and ‘legacy’ models in a plug&play manner, making it easier for new organizations to join collaborations.

• Data warehousing and semantic data mining • Spatial, temporal, multimedia and multimodal semantics • Semantics in data visualization • Semantic services for mobile users • Supporting tools • Applications of semantic-driven approaches These topics are to be understood as speci?cally related to semantic issues. Contributions submitted to the journal and dealing with semantics of data will be considered even if they are not within the topics in the list. While the physical appearanceof the journal issues looks like the books from the well-known Springer LNCS series, the mode of operation is that of a jo- nal. Contributions can be freely submitted by authors and are reviewed by the Editorial Board. Contributions may also be invited, and nevertheless carefully reviewed, as in the case for issues that contain extended versions of best papers from major conferences addressing data semantics issues. Special issues, foc- ing on a speci?c topic, are coordinated by guest editors once the proposal for a special issue is accepted by the Editorial Board. Finally, it is also possible that a journal issue be devoted to a single text. The journal published its ?rst volumein 2003(LNCS 2800),its secondvolume at the beginning of 2005(LNCS 3360), and its third volume in Summer 2005 (LNCS 3534). Volumes I, II and V are special issues composed of selected extended versions of best conference papers. Volume III is a special issue on Semantic-Based Geographical Infor- tion Systems, coordinated by guest editor Esteban Zim ́ anyi.

Database Semantics: Semantic Issues in Multimedia Systems reflects the state of the art of emerging research on the meaning of multimedia information, as presented during IFIP's Eighth Data Semantics Working Conference (DS-8), organized by its Working Group 2.6 on Databases, and held at Rotorua, New Zealand, in January 1999. DS-8 was planned as an active forum for researchers and practitioners focusing on those issues that involve the semantics of the information represented, stored, and manipulated by multimedia systems. Depending on the topic and state of research, issues may be covered either deeply theoretically or quite practically, or even both. These proceedings contain twenty-one papers carefully selected by an International Programme Committee and organized in six thematic areas: Video Data Modelling and Use; Image Databases; Applications of Multimedia Systems; Multimedia Modeling in General; Multimedia Information Retrieval; Semantics and Metadata. For almost every area, important topics and issues include: data modeling and query languages for media such as audio, video, and images; methodological aspects of multimedia database design; intelligent multimedia information retrieval; knowledge discovery and data mining in multimedia information; multimedia user interfaces. Three visionary keynote addresses, by famous experts Ramesh Jain, Hermann Maurer and Masao Sakauchi, set the stage for discussion and future directions for the field. The collection of papers that resulted now offers a glimpse of the excitement and enthusiasm from DS-8. Database Semantics: Semantic Issues in Multimedia Systems is suitable as a secondary text for a graduate-level course on database systems, multimedia systems, or information retrieval systems and as a reference for practitioners and researchers in industry.

The explosion in data exchange fostered by the success of the Web has restated semantics as a kernel issue in the development of services providing data and - formationtousersandapplicationsworldwide. Thisnewlydesignatedconference serieson"SemanticsfortheNetworkedWorld"uni?esintoasingleframework the previous series on "Database Semantics" and "Visual Database Systems" that the IFIP WG 2.6 has been o?ering since 1985. Whereas the intent of the conferenceseriesistoexploreinterestingresearchissuesrelatedtosemantics, the themeforthe2004editionis"SemanticsforGridDatabases". Gridcomputing, a new?eld concentrating on "?exible, secure, coordinated resource sharing among dynamic collections of individuals, institutions, and resources (also referred to as virtual organizations)", has gathered momentum in the context of providing shared infrastructures for large-scale scienti?c computations and data analysis. Similarly, P2P computing has attracted substantial attention. Currently, attention is devoted to the provision of middleware services to makecomputationalresourcesinteroperableatthetechnicallevelandtoincrease the e?ciency of use of physical resources. However, as Grid and P2P computing infrastructures are being increasingly adopted, they are likely to have typical problems of information overload that manifest themselves in any large-scale infrastructure for information and application sharing (e.g., the WWW). The need for resource discovery, application and service interoperability, integration and composition manifest themselves in these infrastructures. The ability to interoperate at the semantic level will largely determine the continued success and utilization of these infrastructures

Now available in paperback for the first time since its original publication, the material in this book provides a broad, accessible guide to semantic typology, crosslinguistic semantics and diachronic semantics. Coming from a world-leading team of authors, the book also deals with the concept of meaning in psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics, and the understanding of semantics in computer science. It is packed with highly cited, expert guidance on the key topics in the field, making it a bookshelf essential for linguists, cognitive scientists, philosophers, and computer scientists working on natural language.

"This book addresses the Semantic Web from an operative point of view using theoretical approaches, methodologies, and software applications as innovative solutions to true knowledge management"--Provided by publisher.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the Second International Conference on Topic Map Research and Applications, TMRA 2006, held in Leipzig, Germany in October 2006. It covers headed creation and visualization of topic maps, applied topic maps in industry, administration and sciences, standards related research, leveraging the semantics, technical issues of topic mapping, and social software with topic maps.

Peer-to-peer systems are evolving with new information-system architectures, leading to the idea that the principles of decentralization and self-organization will offer new approaches in informatics, especially for systems that scale with the number of users or for which central authorities do not prevail. This book describes a new way of building global agreements (semantic interoperability) based only on decentralized, self-organizing interactions.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Adaptive Multimedia Retrieval, AMR 2007, held in Paris, France, in July 2007. The 18 revised full papers presented together with 2 invited papers were carefully selected during two rounds of reviewing and improvement. The papers are organized in topical sections on image annotation, feedback and user modelling, music retrieval, fusion, P2P and middleware, databases and summarization, as well as ontology and semantics.