Previous Editions

The original TOOLS conference series started in 1989 and, over the following years, held multiple sessions: TOOLS EUROPE, TOOLS USA, TOOLS PACIFIC, TOOLS CHINA and TOOLS EASTERN EUROPE. TOOLS played a major role in the spread of object-oriented and component technologies; many seminal software concepts now taken for granted were first discussed at TOOLS, taking advantage of the informal, application-oriented, technically intense and marketing-free atmosphere of the conference. After an interruption of four years TOOLS started again, hosted by ETH Zürich for the first time in June 2007 with great success.

Software Technologies: Applications and Foundations (STAF) was formed after the end of the successful TOOLS federated event in 2012, providing a loose umbrella organisation with a steering committee that aims to provide continuity. Today, STAF is a federation of a number of the leading conferences on software technologies.

The STAF federated event runs annually; the conferences that participate may vary from year to year, but all focus on practical and foundational advances in software technology. The conferences address all aspects of software technology, from object-oriented design, testing, mathematical approaches to modelling and verification, transformation, model-driven engineering, aspect-oriented techniques, and tools.