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         +===================================================+
         +=======    Quality Techniques Newsletter    =======+
         +=======            January 2003             =======+
         +===================================================+

QUALITY TECHNIQUES NEWSLETTER (QTN) is E-mailed monthly to
Subscribers worldwide to support the Software Research, Inc. (SR),
TestWorks, QualityLabs, and eValid user communities and other
interested parties to provide information of general use to the
worldwide internet and software quality and testing community.

Permission to copy and/or re-distribute is granted, and secondary
circulation is encouraged by recipients of QTN provided that the
entire document/file is kept intact and this complete copyright
notice appears with it in all copies.  Information on how to
subscribe or unsubscribe is at the end of this issue.  (c) Copyright
2002 by Software Research, Inc.

========================================================================

                       Contents of This Issue

   o  eValid Fixed-Price Performance Testing Program

   o  Sixth International Baltic Conference on Data Bases and
      Information Systems

   o  eValid Updates and Specials

   o  9th European Software Engineering Conference

   o  Workshop on Web Services and Agent Based Engineering

   o  First Extreme Educational Symposium

   o  QTN Article Submittal, Subscription Information

========================================================================

           eValid Fixed-Price Performance Testing Program

eValid's Fixed-Price Performance Testing Program allows firms to
increase the ROI on limited testing budgets -- without the need to
invest in tools, people and training. You get top-notch state-of-the
art assessment of server capacity that maximizes end-user
satisfaction. At less than $2 per simulated user.

                           How It Works!

Putting the needs of our clients first, these fixed-price
Performance Testing Program packages are designed to provide top-
notch quality testing at affordable prices. By taking advantage of
our experience in developing and applying functional and performance
test and load scripts you get answers to your critical performance
questions and save thousands!

Clients select the plan that fits their budget and needs. eValid's
performance testing team then conducts remote testing of your
WebSite or web application's scalability and responsiveness, based
on predetermined numbers of Transactional Users (TU's), Navigational
Users (NU's), and detailed page timing analyses.

                         It's Your Choice!

Select the option that suits your needs and budget.

  o BRONZE PACKAGE ($4,950).  You get three days of script
    development work in a 5-day test project. We build up to 20
    scripts, organized in up to 3 scenarios. Detailed tuning is done
    on up to 5 pages.

    Your performance tests span as many as 50 transactional users,
    and up to 1,000 navigational users. Loads include up to 1,050
    users total.

  o SILVER PACKAGE ($7,450).  You get five days of script
    development work in a 10-day test project. We build up to 40
    scripts, organized in up to 5 scenarios. Detailed tuning is done
    on up to 10 pages.

    Your performance tests span as many as 100 transactional users,
    and up to 2,000 navigational users. Loads include up to 2,100
    users total.

  o GOLD PACKAGE ($9,950).  You get ten days day of script
    development work in a 20-day test project. We build up to 60
    scripts, organized in up to 10 scenarios. Detailed tuning is
    done on up to 15 pages.

    Your performance tests span as many as 250 transactional users,
    and up to 5,000 navigational users. Loads include up to 5,250
    users total.

                            The Details

Please get the complete details about eValid Performance Test
Program deliverables -- including all production parameters -- at
these pages:

<http://www.soft.com/eValid/Services/PerformanceTest/summary.html>

<http://www.soft.com/eValid/Services/PerformanceTest/schedule.html>

For complete information contact .

========================================================================

             Sixth International Baltic Conference on
                 Data Bases and Information Systems
                            (DB&IS.2004)
                    June 6-9, 2004 Riga, Latvia
                   <http://www.riti.lv/dbis2004>

Organised by:  Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science,
University of Latvia, Department of Computer Science, University of
Latvia, Riga Information Technology Institute.

Supported by:  Council of European Professional Informatics
Association (CEPIS), Latvian Information Technology and
Telecommunications Association (LITTA).

Sponsored by:  The VLDB Baltic Fund, Latvian Science Council, Other
sponsors pending.


Objective:  The Baltic conference on databases and information
systems is thought as an international forum for technical
discussion among researchers and developers of database and
information systems. The objective of the conference is to bring
together researchers as well as practitioners and PhD students in
the field of computing research that will improve the construction
of future information systems. On the other hand, the conference is
giving opportunities to developers, users and researchers of
advanced IS technologies to present their work and to exchange their
ideas and at the same time providing a feedback to database
community.  This conference is continuing a series of successful
bi-annual Baltic workshops on databases and information systems that
have been held in Trakai (1994), Tallinn (1996, 2002), Riga (1998),
and Vilnius (2000).  The conference will share some sessions and
other events with the 16th Conference on Advanced Information
Systems Engineering CAiSE.2004, June 7-11, also in Riga, Latvia.

Structure and Topics of Interest:  The conference language is
English (talks as well as publications). The conference is planned
to include two main tracks: traditional research track and advanced
application track. To activate and motivate PhD students the
conference program will include Doctoral Consortium chaired by
invited professors.

Major research topics for the conference will include, but are not
limited to:

    Data and Knowledge Management
    Data Integration Methods
    Data Mining
    Distributed Database Techniques and Interoperability
    Domain Ontologies and Concept-Based Search
    Information Systems and Security
    Information Systems, Data Warehousing, OLAP, and Knowledge  Discovery
    Information Systems, Mobile Computing, and Agents
    Integrated Information Systems
    Intelligent Information Agents
    Knowledge Engineering and Databases
    Knowledge Management and Information Systems
    Linguistic Components of Information Systems
    Logic and Databases
    Ontology Design Methods
    Ontology-Based Information Systems
    Quantum Computing
    Requirements Engineering for Information Systems
    Schema Induction
    Web and Databases
    XML and Databases

Application topics of interest include but are not limited to:

    Agent-Oriented Approaches to Data Integration
    Agents and Knowledge Management
    Business Information Systems
    Component-Based Systems Development
    Database Development Tools
    E-Commerce and Database Technology
    Geographic Information Systems
    Information Systems and AI Technologies
    Integrated and Interoperable Database Technologies
    Intelligent Information Access
    Legal Information Systems
    National Information Infrastructure Development
    Ontologies in Agent-Oriented Information Systems
    Regional Infrastructure Information Systems and Database Applications
    Web Information Systems
Information

For general information, please send email to
.  For further information on electronic
submission, please send email to .

========================================================================

                    eValid Updates and Specials
                     <http://www.e-valid.com>

               Purchase Online, Get Free Maintenance

That's right, we provide you a full 12-month eValid Maintenance
Subscription if you order eValid products direct from the online
store:  <http://store.yahoo.com/srwebstore/evalid.html>

                 New Download and One-Click Install

Even if you already got your free evaluation key for Ver. 3.2 we
have reprogrammed the eValid key robot so you can still qualify for
a free evaluation for Ver. 4.0.  Please give us basic details about
yourself at:
<http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Download.40/down.evalid.40.phtml?status=FORM>

If the key robot doesn't give you the keys you need, please write to
us  and we will get an eValid evaluation key
sent to you ASAP!

                     New eValid Bundle Pricing

The most-commonly ordered eValid feature key collections are now
available as discounted eValid bundles.  See the new bundle pricing
at:  <http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/bundle.pricelist.4.html>

Or, if you like, you can compose your own feature "bundle" by
checking the pricing at:

<http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/feature.pricelist.4.html>

Check out the complete product feature descriptions at:

<http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.40/release.4.0.html>

Tell us the combination of features you want and we'll work out an
attractive discounted quote for you!  Send email to  and be assured of a prompt reply.

========================================================================

        9th European Software Engineering Conference (ESEC)
                                 &
             11th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium
          on Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE-11)

                        1 - 5 September 2003
                         Helsinki, Finland
<http://esecfse.cs.helsinki.fi/>

ESEC/FSE 2003 will bring together researchers and practitioners of
software engineering to report new innovative research results and
exchange experiences related to both traditional and emerging areas
in software development. In addition to the technical program,
ESEC/FSE 2003 will include a program of tutorials and workshops on
current hot topics in software engineering.

We invite submission of technical papers that report results of
theoretical, empirical, and experimental work, as well as experience
with technology transition.

We encourage submissions in any field of software engineering,
including, but not limited to:

        Software Process and Workflow
        Requirements Engineering
        Design
        Software Architectures, Patterns, and Frameworks
        Specification and Verification
        Testing and Test Tools
        Software Analysis and Model Checking
        Maintenance, Evolution, Re-/Reverse Engineering
        Software Engineering Tools and Environments
        Software Configuration Management
        Component-Based Software Engineering
        Software Reliability Engineering
        Generic Programming and Software Reuse
        Safety and Security
        Software Metrics
        Interface Technologies
        Distributed / Web-Based / Internet-Scale Software Engineering

General Chair:
        Jukka Paakki, University of Helsinki,
        jukka.paakki@cs.helsinki.fi

Program Chair:
        Paola Inverardi, University of l'Aquila,
        inverard@di.univaq.it

========================================================================

                            Workshop on
          WEB SERVICES AND AGENT-BASED ENGINEERING (WSABE)
                  <http://agentus.com/WSABE2003/>


to be held at the The Second International Joint Conference on
Autonomous Agents & Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2003)
<http://www.aamas-conference.org/>

Melbourne, Australia 14 or 15 July 2003 (to be decided)

The wide spread of Internet technologies is having an important
impact on the way businesses deal with their partners and customers.
To remain competitive, traditional businesses are under the pressure
to take advantage of the information revolution the Internet and the
Web have brought about. Most businesses are adopting Web-based
approaches for more automation, efficient business processes,
personalization, and worldwide visibility.

Web services are one of the technologies that could help businesses
in being more Web-oriented. Web services are a rapidly expanding
approach to building distributed software systems across networks
such as the Internet. A Web service is an operation typically
addressed via a URI, declaratively described using widely accepted
standards, and accessed via platform-independent XML-based messages.
The development of industry standards, products, and tools for
supporting Web service system development is proceeding at a very
rapid rate. Standards exist for service discovery (UDDI),
description (WSDL), coordination (BPML, BPEL4WS, WSCI), and
communication (SOAP). Despite all the efforts that are spent on Web
services research and development, many businesses are still
struggling with how to put their core business competences on the
Internet as a collection of Web services.

While a Web service need not fulfill all characteristics of a strong
definition of agency, the Web services approach to building complex
software systems bears many similarities to the engineering process
of a collection of software agents. In particular, large systems are
assembled from distributed heterogeneous software components
providing specialized services and communicating using agreed-upon
protocols.  Similarly to certain multi-agent engineering paradigms,
the design process of such systems focuses on the declarative
characterization of the agents' capabilities and on a message-based
paradigm of interoperation.

The area of Web Services offers much of real interest to the Multi
Agent community, including similarities in system architectures,
powerful tools, and the focus on issues such as security and
reliability. Similarly, techniques developed in the Multi Agent
research community promise to have a strong impact on this fast
growing technology.

The purpose of this workshop is to discuss the recent and
significant developments in the general area of Web Services and
software agents and to promote cross-fertilization of techniques. We
seek original and high quality submissions that apply Multi Agent
research to Web Service frameworks and vice versa in innovative and
interesting ways.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
  * Architectures and infrastructure for distributed agent- or
    service- based frameworks;
  * Agent-based modeling and design techniques to address problems
    in web service system development;
  * Process modeling (e.g. workflow-, planning-, logic-based
    approaches) for service/agent composition, orchestration and
    coordination;
  * Multi-agent techniques to describing, organizing, and
    discovering web services;
  * Ontology or semantic-based approaches to describing and
    classifying services and capabilities;
  * Using speech acts, performatives, and conversational models for
    web service specification and coordination;
  * Use of agent-based approaches for web service personalization;
  * Security support for agents and services, and agent-based
    approaches to service security;
  * Transactional integrity for long-running transactions in
    service- or agent-systems;
  * Intelligent matchmaking and service brokering;
  * Pricing and payment models for Web services;
  * Web service agreements, legal contracts, and social commitments
    between trading partners;
  * Interoperability of web services;
  * In-depth critiques of web service standards, comparison to agent
    community standards, and their adequacy for agent based
    solutions;
  * Services and the semantic web, including initiatives such as
    DAML-S;
  * Infrastructure and architectures for M-services;
  * Use of web service infrastructure and tools for building multi-
    agent systems.


Co-chairs

Lawrence Cavedon
Center for the Study of Language and Information
Stanford University, USA


Zakaria Maamar
College of Information Systems
Zayed University, UAE


========================================================================

                First Extreme Educational Symposium
               <http://www.xp2003.org/EduSymCfP.html>

At the Conference on eXtreme Programming and Agile Processes in
Software Engineering (<http://www.xp2003.org>).

The Extreme Educational Symposium is a special forum for teachers in
Extreme Programming and Agile Processes. Therefore we are looking
for teachers from academia and industry who would like to discuss
their needs and ideas for integrating extreme programming and agile
processes into training plans and courses.  Thus it is you who makes
this symposium an interesting event!

We are favoring topics in the area of expertise in other domains
(interdisciplinary teaching and learning), facilitation a learning
organization (educating for change), and active learning.

We are seeking submissions from the following four different
categories:  (1) Experience Paper (2) Research Paper (4)
Poster/Demonstration

Contact:

Jutta Eckstein     Phone: +49-700-JECKSTEIN or +49-89-224827
Thierschstr, 20    Fax: +49-89-21869507
80538 Munich       Email: info@jeckstein.com
Germany            

========================================================================


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