General talk about software patterns

[Daniel Lohmann <daniel.lohmann AT informatik.uni-erlangen.de>]

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       9th AOSD Workshop on Aspects, Components, and Patterns

                for Infrastructure Software (ACP4IS)

                           March 16, 2010

                   Rennes and Saint Malo, France

               http://aosd.net/workshops/acp4is/2010

       A one-day workshop to be held in conjunction with the

                  9th International Conference on

          Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD'10),

     March 15 -- March 19, 2010, Rennes and Saint Malo, France

                     http://aosd.net/conference

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The importance of "systems infrastructure" software - including

application servers, virtual machines, middleware, compilers, and

operating systems - is increasing as application programmers demand

better and higher-level support for software development. Vendors

that provide superior support for application development have a

competitive advantage. The software industry as a whole benefits as

the base level of abstraction increases, thus decreasing the need

for application programmers to continually "reinvent the wheel".

These trends, however, mean that the demands on infrastructure

software are increasing. More and more features and requirements are

being "pushed down" into the infrastructure, and the developers of

systems software need better tools and techniques for handling these

increased demands. The design and implementation of systems-level

software presents unique opportunities and challenges for AOSD

techniques. These challenges include the need to address the

inherent complexity of infrastructure software; the need for strong

assurances of correct and predictable behavior; the need for maximum

run-time performance; and the necessity of dealing with the large

body of existing systems software components.

This workshop aims to provide a highly interactive forum for

researchers and developers to discuss the application of and

relationships between aspects, components, and patterns within

modern infrastructure software. The goal is to put aspects,

components, and patterns into a common reference frame and to build

connections between the software engineering and systems

communities.

This year's workshop puts special focus on the challenges in

system's programming introduced by multi-core platforms. As

hardware-supported parallelization becomes mainstream, there is an

increasing pressure on systems infrastructure to exploit this new

parallelism to its fullest. However, the non-modular nature of

parallel execution, and the numerous levels at which parallelism can

be achieved (application, systems infrastructure, hardware or even a

combination) make it hard to come up with an intuitive, yet

efficient parallel architecture. We solicit novel ideas and

experience reports on this emerging research area.

Other suggested topics for position papers include, but are not

restricted to:

- Approaches that combine or relate component-, pattern-, and

  aspect-based techniques

- Dimensions of infrastructure software quality including

  comprehensibility, configurability (by implementers),

  customizability (by users), reliability, evolvability,

  scalability, and run-time characteristics such as performance and

  code size

- Merits and downsides of container-, ORB-, and system-based

  separation of concerns

- Architectural techniques for particular system concerns, e.g.,

  security, static and dynamic optimization, and real-time behaviour

- Design patterns for systems software

- Component, pattern, and aspect "mining" within systems code

- Application- or domain-specific optimization of systems

- Reasoning and optimization across architectural layers

- Quantitative and qualitative evaluations

AGENDA

The workshop will be structured to encourage fruitful discussions

and build connections between workshop participants. To this end,

approximately half of the workshop time will be devoted to short

presentations of accepted papers, with the remaining half devoted to

semi-structured discussion groups. Participants will be expected to

have read the accepted papers prior to the workshop, to help ensure

focused discussions.

A novelty at ACP4IS '10 is that we will invite workshop attendees to

give "spontaneous" short presentations on their work if they see a

relation to topics being presented and discussed at the workshop.

These presentations will be limited to about ten minutes, and are

intended to provide additional structured input to discussions.

Spontaneous presentations will be asked for during the workshop; no

paper needs to be submitted, and no publication is associated with

them. There will be a session dedicated to them, just prior to

discussion.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Invitation to the workshop will be based on accepted position

papers, 3-5 pages in length. All papers must be submitted as PDF

documents in ACM format through the ACP4IS 2010 online submission

system found at:

http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=acp4is10. 

Paper submissions will be reviewed by the workshop program committee

and by designated reviewers. Papers will be evaluated based on

technical quality, originality, relevance, and presentation.

PUBLICATION OF PAPERS

All accepted papers will be posted at the workshop web site prior to

the workshop date, to give all participants the opportunity to read

them before the workshop. In addition, the accepted papers will be

published in a Workshop Proceedings in the ACM Digital Library.

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper submission deadline:    December 21, 2009

Notification of acceptance:   January 15, 2010

Final papers due:             TBA

Workshop:                     March 16, 2010

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

- Mehmet Aksit,               University of Twente

- Shigeru Chiba,              Tokyo Institute of Technology

- Julia Lawall,               DIKU

- Hidehiko Masuhara,          University of Tokyo

- Hridesh Rajan,              Iowa State University

- Doug Simon,                 Sun Microsystems Laboratories

- Olaf Spinczyk,              University of Dortmund

- Eric Wohlstadter,           University of British Columbia

- Roel Wuyts,                 IMEC and K.U. Leuven

- more to be announced

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

- Bram Adams,                 Queen's University

- Michael Haupt,              Hasso Plattner Institut

- Daniel Lohmann,             FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg

STEERING COMMITTEE

- Eric Eide,                  University of Utah

- Olaf Spinczyk,              University of Dortmund

- Yvonne Coady,               University of Victoria

- David Lorenz,               University of Virginia