The group's research areas are very topical, addressing the universal key issues of developing information systems. Acting in information society sets new merits for the development of IS, both in efficiency, usefulness, reliability, and integration needs, as also in achieving shorter development cycles, budget reduction, in processes improvement. Research results in a form of new methods contribute to better quality, efficiency and efficacy of object- and component-oriented systems. Introduction of services architecture concepts enable new possibilities to construct distributed systems, development of which requires an efficient abstraction of program platform specifics. The internet environment requires the integration capabilities for any platform - the results in the field of architecture definitions, based on the models and translation mechanisms to actual platforms, therefore, rise the level of abstraction and provide higher values for architecture solutions. The basis for new the definition of new formal approaches to IS integration is set, which are not based on syntax accordance of interfaces, but rather enable the integration at the semantic level. This requires the introduction of an appropriate meta-data model and the enhancement of interface definition mechanisms. These approaches also contribute to the improvement of information quality and security, requiring new search, adaptation, and transformation methods. The research results, therefore, add to the actualisation of above mentioned concepts. Integration is the basis for e-commerce methods, which are not concerned only with exchange, but also address the problems of locating, profile exchange, reaching a cooperation agreement, and negotiation mechanisms. These aspects represent a whole spectre of solutions for the e-commerce needs and help in co-creating a single European market, primarily in the European Union, within the scope of 6th FP projects. Mechanisms and methods to control the quality of IS development, with the emphasis on the quantitative evaluation and integration of quality aspects, enable the improvement of processes of software development; they are a necessity to achieve the highest levels of CMM (Capability Maturity Model). The research results of embedded systems address primarily the area of integrity and reliability. With the definition of strict methods they contribute to faster and more effective verification and reliability improvement, and that leads to better quality of embedded systems in all areas of their use. Successful participation of the group in European projects in the scope of 5th and 6th FP demonstrates the worldwide interest for the above mentioned research issues. Similar is also the importance of the research results in the fields of intelligent and knowledge-based systems, the results of methodological aspects research, that form a sound base for effective information extraction also from small datasets, knowledge discovery from data, and the base for new software engineering laws in measuring the software reliability.