Developing business application systems

The urge for a better, cheaper, and faster development and tailoring of application software systems can be explained by their high importance: well-working infonnation processing is a required precondition for the prosperity - or even for the mere survival- ofmany businesses and institutions. Hence it is a highly warrantable and topical objective to significantly irnprove software development by new technologies and methods, to increase quality and benefits while at the same time decreasing lifecycle costs and project durations. Where, however, are reasonable starting points for research activities that pursue these objectives? Software reuse and in particular the closely related component- and service-orientation are among the few fundamental approaches that show greatest promise. This book presents six respective research articles. The book is based on my cumulative doctoral thesis and I feel indebted to many people and their support. I thank Prof. Dr. Klaus Turowski in the first place. He enabled my integration as an external researcher at the Chair of Business Informatics and Systems Engineering, Universität Augsburg, and he provided most valuable support in decisive situations. I give my thanks to Prof. De. Robert Klein for the second opinion on my dissertation and to Prof. De. Axel Tuma for presiding the disputation. I am grateful to my co-authors De. Sven Overhage and Michael ProB for the good, successful, and pleasant team work on our research articles.