Book excerpt: The idea of editing a book on modern software architectures and tools for CAPE (Computer Aided Process Engineering) came about when the editors of this volume realized that existing titles relating to CAPE did not include references to the design and development of CAPE software. Scientific software is needed to solve CAPE related problems by industry/academia for research and development, for education and training and much more. There are increasing demands for CAPE software to be versatile, flexible, efficient, and reliable. This means that the role of software architecture is also gaining increasing importance. Software architecture needs to reconcile the objectives of the software; the framework defined by the CAPE methods; the computational algorithms; and the user needs and tools (other software) that help to develop the CAPE software. The object of this book is to bring to the reader, the software side of the story with respect to computer aided process engineering.