Book excerpt: Internet-based information systems, the second covering the large-scale in- gration of heterogeneous computing systems and data resources with the aim of providing a global computing space. Eachofthesefourconferencesencouragesresearcherstotreattheirrespective topics within a framework that incorporates jointly (a) theory, (b) conceptual design and development, and (c) applications, in particular case studies and industrial solutions. Following and expanding the model created in 2003, we again solicited and selected quality workshop proposals to complement the more “archival” nature of the main conferences with research results in a number of selected and more “avant-garde” areas related to the general topic of Web-based distributed c- puting. For instance, the so-called Semantic Web has given rise to several novel research areas combining linguistics, information systems technology, and ar- ?cial intelligence, such as the modeling of (legal) regulatory systems and the ubiquitous nature of their usage. We were glad to see that ten of our earlier s- cessful workshops (ADI, CAMS, EI2N, SWWS, ORM, OnToContent, MONET, SEMELS, COMBEK, IWSSA) re-appeared in 2008 with a second, third or even ?fth edition, sometimes by alliance with other newly emerging workshops, and that no fewer than three brand-new independent workshops could be selected from proposals and hosted: ISDE, ODIS and Beyond SAWSDL. Workshop - diences productively mingled with each other and with those of the main c- ferences, and there was considerable overlap in authors.