TOOLS Europe 2011 — Special Section

Now that object technology is mainstream, it can be studied in combination with other technologies devoted to achieving high quality software. This Special Section of JOT presents aspects of object technology and related fields, in particular model-based development, component-based development, language implementation and patterns, in a holistic way. The papers have a strong practical bias, without losing sight of the importance of correctness and performance. It presents seven selected and extended papers from the 49th International Conference on Objects, Models, Components and Patterns (TOOLS Europe 2011 http://toolseurope2011.lcc.uma.es/) held on June 28–30, 2011 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland, organized by the Chair of Software Engineering.