SAC

Welcome to the 18th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC'2003) as hosted by Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida! Thanks for attending this international forum for computer scientists, engineers and practitioners that includes many innovative computational ideas and a wide spectrum of applications.SAC is a conference devoted to the study of real-world problem applications using many varieties of computation algorithms. As such, it provides an avenue for discussion and exchange of new ideas, associated computation algorithms, and interesting complex applications. The symposium is rightly sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Applications (SIGAPP) whose mission is to further the interests of the computing professional engaged in the development of new computing applications, interdisciplinary applications areas, and applied research. Thus, the spectrum of applications and tutorials covers data mining, mobile computing, and computational finance to evolutionary algorithms, software engineering, and parallel and distributed computing plus others designed to provide a wide range of topics as reflected in the SAC'2003 program. Note that 8iomedical Computing continues to be a special element of the symposium with an innovative bioinformatics track and associated tutorials and plenary session as directed by Warren Jones.Again welcome to SAC'2003 and Melbourne, Florida. We hope that you will leave enriched with new friends and new ideas having enjoyed the distinctive ambiance of Florida. Next year, we encourage you and your colleagues to submit papers and attend SAC'2004.Welcome to the 18th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC 2003). Over the past 17 years, SAC has been an international forum for researchers and practitioners to present their findings and research results in the areas of computer applications and technology. The SAC 2003 Technical Program offers a wide range of tracks covering major ar3eas of computer applications. Highly qualified referees with strong expertise and special inter4est in their respective research areas carefully reviewed the submitted papers. As part of the Technical Program, this yeard the Tutorial Program offers 4 half-day tutorials that were carefully selected form 18 proposals. The Tutorial Program and abstracts are available at http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2003/Tutorials.htm.SAC's open call for Track Proposals resulted in teh submission of 30 track proposals. These proposals were carefully evaluated by the conference Executive Committee. Some proposals were rejected on the grounds of either not being appropriate for the areas that SAC covers traditionally or being of rather narrow and specialized nature. Some others were merged to form a single track, on the grounds of having substantial overlap with each other. Eventually, 21 tracks were established, which then went on to produce their own call for papers. Int response to these calls, 525 were submitted, from which 200 papers were strongly recommended by the referees for acceptance and inclusion in the Conference Proceedings. This gives SAC an acceptance rate of 38% across all tracks. Furthermore, it makes SAC 2003 the most successful conference in the history of SAC so far, but also one of the most popular and comppetitive conferences in the international field of applied computing.We hope you will enjoy the metting and have the opportunity to exchange your ideas and make new friends. We also hope you will enjoy your stay in Melbourne and take pleasure from the many entertainments and activites that the city (and neighboring cities such as Orlando) has to offer. We look forward to your active participation in SAC 2003, and encourage you and your colleagues to submit your research findings to next years technical program. Thank you for being part of SAC 2003!