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Preface v

as well as information about further case studies, such as the failure of the
Ariane 5 launcher.

As well as these sections, there are also links to other sites with useful material on
software engineering, further reading, blogs, newsletters, etc.
I welcome your constructive comments and suggestions about the book and the
website. You can contact me at ian@SoftwareEngineering-9.com. Please include
[SE9] in the subject of your message. Otherwise, my spam filters will probably
reject your mail and you will not receive a reply. I do not have time to help students
with their homework, so please don’t ask.

Readership

The book is primarily aimed at university and college students taking introductory
and advanced courses in software and systems engineering. Software engineers in
the industry may find the book useful as general reading and as a means of updating
their knowledge on topics such as software reuse, architectural design, dependability
and security, and process improvement. I assume that readers have completed an
introductory programming course and are familiar with programming terminology.

Changes from previous editions

This edition has retained the fundamental material on software engineering that was
covered in previous editions but I have revised and updated all chapters and have
included new material on many different topics. The most important changes are:

1. The move from a print-only book to a hybrid print/web book with the web mate-
rial tightly integrated with the sections in the book. This has allowed me to reduce
the number of chapters in the book and to focus on core material in each chapter.
2. Complete restructuring to make it easier to use the book in teaching software
engineering. The book now has four rather than eight parts and each part may be
used on its own or in combination with other parts as the basis of a software
engineering course. The four parts are an introduction to software engineering,
dependability and security, advanced software engineering, and software engi-
neering management.
3. Several topics from previous editions are presented more concisely in a single
chapter, with extra material moved onto the Web.
4. Additional web chapters, based on chapters from previous editions that I have
not included here, are available on the Web.