Book excerpt: The papers published here highlight the contributions of leading researchers in the field who are working with object-oriented technology, theory and practice. Among the topics to be covered are: object-relational data technology; distributed object computing; patterns and frameworks; concepts and methodologies; multimedia systems; object-0riented metrics; object reuse; object ontologies; business process re-design; knowledge management; object database management systems; and interoperability issues. Areas of significant interest to industry, especially in providing innovative directions for the development of next generation systems, are also covered.