The design and complexity of distributed systems in industrial environments requires specific software engineering methods due to their inherent complexity. To meet these challenges new methods and tools have been developed over the last years which base on the component oriented software development paradigm together with role based programming and design patterns (e.g. SUN Enterprise Java Beans, Microsoft .NET). These methods and tools are increasingly used in industry.

New methods are also available for the integration of heterogeneous systems. These methods are based on generic application protocols (e.g. Web Services) which can be customised for a given application. Typically the customisation includes the definition of terms (e.g. product or service names, attributes, etc.) from the application context. This effort is supported by formal approaches (Ontologies) which ease the agreement on terms and reduce the room for possible misunderstandings. In addition the customisation process will use international standards which provide definitions for frequently used terms.

Key nodes in a distributed environment are information systems managing a wide range of different types of data including relational and non-relational data types (e.g. documents, images, vectors for CAD and geographical positions, etc.). These information systems need to provide fast access and analysis capabilities for the stored data. Beneath traditional technologies based on relational and object oriented databases, new methods like OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) and vector databases as well as new indexing technologies are increasingly used.

On the application side such a system has to support the business processes of the involved organisations. Beneath other functions a system needs to support at least the logistic part of these processes. This includes the management of resources and the planning and monitoring of activities. The planning of activities needs to be supported by automatic planning methods (e.g. search and constrained based methods, genetic algorithms, simulation).

Experts possessing a good understanding of these methods combined with extensive experience are still rare in industry. In fact the number of integrated IT solutions will significantly grow over the next years in a globalised market with challenging response times to market needs for companies. Since this master course provides the theoretical background knowledge together with significant experience in the application of these methods, it opens the perspective of becoming a highly demanded and well paid expert.