Forthe29thtime,SOFSEM(SOFtwareSEMinar)washeld.Havingtransformed over the years from a local event to a fully international conference, the c- temporary SOFSEM is a mix of a winter school and a conference striving for multidisciplinarity in computer science, accompaniedby workshops dedicated to a narrow ?eld (this year multimedia and softcomputing) and a student forum. This volume constitutes the proceedings of SOFSEM 2002 held in Milovy, Czech Republic, November 22–29, 2002. This year, 23 papers were submitted from 11 countries. The selection of the 11 best papers accepted by the Program Committee was based on their contribution to the state of the art, technical soundness, clarity of presentation, and relevance of bibliography. The Steering Committee supported by the Advisory Board recommended 12 invited talks focusedonthefollowingkeytopicareas:distributedandparallelsystems,system design and testing, databases and information systems, and fundamentals. SOFSEM is the result of considerable e?ort by a number of people. It is our pleasure to record our thanks to the Advisory Board for its support, to the Steering Committee for its general guidance, and to the Organizing Committee for making SOFSEM 2002 happen. It has been an honor for us to work with the members of the Program Committee and other referees who devoted a lot of e?ort to reviewing the submitted papers.