Next generation information technologies and systems

NGITS2002 was the ?fth workshop of its kind, promoting papers that discuss new technologies in information systems. Following the success of the four p- vious workshops (1993, 1995, 1997, and 1999), the ?fth NGITS Workshop took place on June 24–25, 2002, in the ancient city of Caesarea. In response to the Call for Papers, 22 papers were submitted. Each paper was evaluated by three Program Committee members. We accepted 11 papers from 3 continents and 5 countries, Israel (5 papers), US (3 papers), Germany, Cyprus, and The Netherlands (1 paper from each). The workshop program consisted of ?ve paper sessions, two keynote lectures, and one panel discussion. The topics of the paper sessions are: Advanced Query Processing, Web Applications, Moving Objects, Advanced Information Models, and Advanced Software Engineering. We would like to thank all the authors who submitted papers, the program committee members, the presenters, and everybody who assisted in making NGITS2002 a reality.