This issue, corresponding to October 2006 (Vol. VII, issue no. 5), is available now at
<http://www.upgrade-cepis.org/issues/2006/5/upgrade-vol-VII-5.html>.

This issue features the following sections:

* A monograph that presents the state-of-the-art in the field of "Web Services". It describes the most relevant theoretical aspects in that area together with some interesting practical developments in some important industries, like healthcare and business-to-business (B2B) commerce. It especially emphasizes the potential of the so-called "Semantic Web Services" to solve the integration and interoperability problems in a more automatic and systematic way.

The guest editors of this monograph are José Carlos del Arco-Prieto (T-Systems, Spain), Jesús Arias-Fisteus (Universidad Carlos III, Madrid, Spain), Oscar Corcho-García (University of Manchester, England) and Jorge Cardoso (Universidade de Madeira, Portugal).

* UPENET (UPGRADE European NETwork), with three articles:
the first one from the Spanish magazine Novática examines the "Open Document Format" file format recently adopted as a standard by ISO (International organization for Standardization),
the second one from the Italian digital journal Mondo Digitale highlights the importance of ensuring the security of technological infrastructures that are necessary to distribute essential services to the populations, and
the third one from the British magazine ITNOW discusses about the need to promote a new professionalism in Information Technology (IT).

* CEPIS NEWS (New Section) which aims to divulge some of the news around the projects in which CEPIS and its member societies are involved.

The monograph of this issue is also published in Spanish (full issue printed already available; summary, presentation,
abstracts and some articles online soon available) by Novática, issue 183 (September-October 2006).