It is now more than twenty-five years since object-oriented programming was “inve- ed” (actually, more than thirty years since work on Simula started), but, by all accounts, it would appear as if object-oriented technology has only been “discovered” in the past ten years! When the first European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming was held in Paris in 1987, I think it was generally assumed that Object-Oriented Progr- ming, like Structured Programming, would quickly enter the vernacular, and that a c- ference on the subject would rapidly become superfluous. On the contrary, the range and impact of object-oriented approaches and methods continues to expand, and, - spite the inevitable oversell and hype, object-oriented technology has reached a level of scientific maturity that few could have foreseen ten years ago. Object-oriented technology also cuts across scientific cultural boundaries like p- haps no other field of computer science, as object-oriented concepts can be applied to virtually all the other areas and affect virtually all aspects of the software life cycle. (So, in retrospect, emphasizing just Programming in the name of the conference was perhaps somewhat short-sighted, but at least the acronym is pronounceable and easy to rem- ber!) This year’s ECOOP attracted 146 submissions from around the world - making the selection process even tougher than usual. The selected papers range in topic from programming language and database issues to analysis and design and reuse, and from experience reports to theoretical contributions.

Interest has grown rapidly over the past dozen years in the application of object-oriented programming and methods to the development of distributed, open systems. This volume presents the proceedings of a workshop intended to assess the current state of research in this field and to facilitate interaction between groups working on very different aspects of object-oriented distributed systems. The workshop was held as part of the 1993 European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP '93). Over fifty people submitted position papers and participated in the workshop, and almost half presented papers. The presented papers were carefully reviewed and revised after the workshop, and 14 papers were selected for this volume.

This volume contains the proceedings of the 8th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECCOP '94), held in Bologna, Italy in July 1994. ECOOP is the premier European event on object-oriented programming and technology. The 25 full refereed papers presented in the volume were selected from 161 submissions; they are grouped in sessions on class design, concurrency, patterns, declarative programming, implementation, specification, dispatching, and experience. Together with the keynote speech "Beyond Objects" by Luc Steels (Brussels) and the invited paper "Putting Objects to Work" by Norbert A. Streitz (GMD-IPSI, Darmstadt) they offer an exciting perspective on object-oriented programming research and applications.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, ECOOP'98, held in Brussels, Belgium, in July 1998. The book presents 24 revised full technical papers selected for inclusion from a total of 124 submissions; also presented are two invited papers. The papers are organized in topical sections on modelling ideas and experiences; design patterns and frameworks; language problems and solutions; distributed memory systems; reuse, adaption and hardware support; reflection; extensible objects and types; and mixins, inheritance and type analysis complexity.

For the ninth time now, the European Conference on Object-Oriented P- gramming provides a mid-summer gathering place for researchers, practitioners, students and newcomers in the field of object technology. Despite fierce c- petition from an increasing number of attractive conferences on object-related topics, ECOOP has successfully positioned itself as the premier European - ject technology conference. One reason is without doubt the composition of the conference week and the nature of its events. Running in parallel on the first two days, a comprehensive tutorial program and a very selective workshop program are offered to attendees. This is followed by a three-day technical p- gram organized in a single track providing a highly communicative atmosphere of scientific exchange and learning. Overlapping with these events are a two-day industrial exhibition and a two-day opportunity for non-industrial system dev- opers to demonstrate their software. Thus, ECOOP is not just a conference on programming but an event touching on the full spectrum of object technology. This volume constitutes the proceedings of the Ninth European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, ECOOP, held in Aarhus, Denmark, August 7-11, 1995. Previous ECOOP conferences were held in Paris (France), Oslo (Norway), Nottingham (England), Ottawa (Canada, jointly with OOPSLA) , Geneva (Switzerland), Utrecht (the Netherlands) , Kaiserslautern (Germany) , and Bologna (Italy). Object technology continues to increase its impact on the corporate world.