This special issue will focus on methods and techniques used to design and implement tools for the development of parallel programs.
Sophisticated tools are of high importance for the development and application of parallel programs.
Our main focus here is on tools that support the late phases of software development, when the program is already functional. Examples for interactive tools are deguggers, performance analyzers and data and program flow visualizers. Automatic tools are load balancers and resource management systems. Although tools differ in functionality they are based on similar internal components, so called monitoring systems. Monitoring systems act as middleware components for tools and may be able to support more than one tool at the time.