This year the SOFSEM conference is coming back to Milovy in Moravia to th be held for the 26 time. Although born as a local Czechoslovak event 25 years ago SOFSEM did not miss the opportunity oe red in 1989 by the newly found freedom in our part of Europe and has evolved into a full-?edged international conference. For all the changes, however, it has kept its generalist and mul- disciplinarycharacter.Thetracksofinvitedtalks,rangingfromTrendsinTheory to Software and Information Engineering, attest to this. Apart from the topics mentioned above, SOFSEM’99 oer s invited talks exploring core technologies, talks tracing the path from data to knowledge, and those describing a wide variety of applications. TherichcollectionofinvitedtalkspresentsonetraditionalfacetofSOFSEM: that of a winter school, in which IT researchers and professionals get an opp- tunity to see more of the large pasture of today’s computing than just their favourite grazing corner. To facilitate this purpose the prominent researchers delivering invited talks usually start with a broad overview of the state of the art in a wider area and then gradually focus on their particular subject.

This year the SOFSEM conference is coming back to Milovy in Moravia to th be held for the 26 time. Although born as a local Czechoslovak event 25 years ago SOFSEM did not miss the opportunity oe red in 1989 by the newly found freedom in our part of Europe and has evolved into a full-?edged international conference. For all the changes, however, it has kept its generalist and mul- disciplinarycharacter.Thetracksofinvitedtalks,rangingfromTrendsinTheory to Software and Information Engineering, attest to this. Apart from the topics mentioned above, SOFSEM’99 oer s invited talks exploring core technologies, talks tracing the path from data to knowledge, and those describing a wide variety of applications. TherichcollectionofinvitedtalkspresentsonetraditionalfacetofSOFSEM: that of a winter school, in which IT researchers and professionals get an opp- tunity to see more of the large pasture of today’s computing than just their favourite grazing corner. To facilitate this purpose the prominent researchers delivering invited talks usually start with a broad overview of the state of the art in a wider area and then gradually focus on their particular subject.