To identify the emergent trends in software-intensive and distributed and decentralized computer systems and their impact on the Information Society in the next 10--15 years, the European Commission has established two Coordinated Actions: Initially the project `Beyond the Horizon' and then, starting in 2006, the project `InterLink'.
This state-of-the-art survey presents the results of three workshops of the InterLink working group on software-intensive systems and novel computing paradigms. The objective was to imagine the landscape in which next generations of software-intensive systems will operate and the challenges they present to computing, software engineering, cognition and intelligence.
The volume starts with an overview of the current state of the art and the research missions in engineering software-intensive systems. The remainder of the book consists of 15 invited papers of the working group participants and is structured in three major parts: ensemble engineering, theory and formal methods, and novel computing paradigms. These papers cover a broad spectrum of relevant topics ranging from methods, languages and tools for ensemble engineering, socio-technical and cyber-physical systems, ensembles in urban environments, formal methods and mathematical foundations for ensembles, orchestration languages to disruptive paradigms such as molecular and chemical computing.