Twelve outstanding papers have been carefully selected from those presented at a series of symposia held at Kyoto University and the Advanced Software Technology and Mechatronics Research Institute of Kyoto during the years 1986 through 1990. Sponsored by the Research Institute of Mathematical Sciences of Kyoto University and ASTEM RI/Kyoto, the symposia covers the theoretical and practical aspects of programming languages and systems, programming styles and methodologies, design and analysis of algorithms, database systems and machine architectures. This volume fulfils in part the goal of the symposia to promote research activities in software, to encourage publication of recent works by Japanese researchers and to circulate these results to the worldwide academic community.