EDITORIAL BOARD Editor-in-Chief Hans van Vliet Department of Computer Science, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Editors Benoit Baudry IRISA-INRIA, Cedex France Antonia Bertolino Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie della Informazione, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Pisa, Italy Daniela Damian Department of Computer Science, University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada Kaushik Dutta College of Computing National University of Singapore, Singapore Helen D. Karatza Department of Informatics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece Patricia Lago Department of Computer Science, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Special Issue Editor Wing-Kwong Chan Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Emeritus Editor-in-Chief Robert L. Glass Computing Trends, Bloomington, IN, USA

Editorial Board Members: D.-H. Bae EECS Department, Computer Science, Daejon, South Korea

D.-C. Lou Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan

R. Bianchini Department of Computer Science, Rutgers University, NJ, USA

W. Maalej Department of Informatics, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

J. Bosch Department of Computer Science and Engineering Chalmers, University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden

N. Medvidovi´c Dept. of Computer Science, University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, CA, USA

D.N. Card Det Norske Veritas, Satellite Beach, FL, USA M. Cataldo Robert Bosch Corporation, Pittsburgh, PA, USA Y. Chen Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA I. Crnkovic Department of Computer Science and Electronics, Mälardalen University, Västers, Sweden J.C. Dueñas López Department of Telematic Systems Engineering, Polytechnic University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain C. Ebert Vector Consulting Services, Stuttgart, Germany A. Garcia Informatics Department, PUC-Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil M. Harman CREST, Software Systems Engineering Group, Department of Computer Science, University College London, London, UK P. Jalote Indraprastha Institute of Inf. Tech. (IIIT), Delhi, India J.-M. Jezequel IRISA, Campus de Beaulieu, Cedex, France

H. Mei Peking University, Institute of Software, School of Computer Science and Electronics Engineering, Beijing, China R. Mirandola Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy R. Santos Dep. Ingenieria Electrica y de Computadoras, Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingenieria Electrica, Universidad Nacional del Sur – CONICET, Argentina H. Sharp Centre for Research in Computing, The Open University, UK D. Shepherd ABB’s Software Engineering Group, Raleigh, NC, USA I. Stamelos Department of Informatics, Software Engineering Group, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece G.H. Subramanian School of Business Administration, Pennsylvania State University, Middletown, PA, USA T.H. Tse Department of Computer Science, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong Ö. Ulusoy Computer Engineering Department, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey

L. Jian Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

J. Wang National Laboratory for Parallel and Distributed Processing, National University of Defence Technology, Changsha, China

M. Jorgensen Simula Research Laboratory, Fornebu, Norway

W.E. Wong Department of Computer Science, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA

P. Kruchten Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

T. Zimmermann Microsoft Research, Seattle, USA

The Journal of Systems and Software is indexed/abstracted in ABI/Inform, Bowker CAD/CAM Abstracts, Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, Computer Abstracts, Computer Literature Index, Computer Reviews, Engineering Index, INSPEC, Thomson ScientificR Computer Contents, Thomson ScientificR Current Contents/Engineering, Computing and Technology, and Thomson ScientificR Science Citation Index. Also covered in the abstract and citation database SCOPUSR . Full text available on ScienceDirectR .