[pept:138] CfP WCL'03 Workshop on Composition Languages

[Markus Lumpe <lumpe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> (by way of Robert Glueck)]

                    Call for Position Statements

        Third International Workshop on Composition Languages

                              WCL 2003

                        In conjunction with
   17th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP)
                        Darmstadt, Germany
                         July 21/22, 2003

            http://www.cs.iastate.edu/~lumpe/WCL2003

Abstract

The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers and
practitioners in the area of component-based software development in
order to address problems concerning the design and implementation of
composition languages and to develop a common understanding of the
corresponding concepts. We would also like to determine the strengths
and weaknesses of composition languages and compare it with similar
approaches in related fields. In this workshop, we intend to continue
the fruitful discussions started at previous workshops on composition
languages, which were held in conjunction with ESEC/FSE 2001 and
ECOOP'02.

The main focus of the workshop will be on software composition on an
architectural level, and not on component-based systems in general. In
particular, we would like to emphasize the important issues of (i) the
design and implementation of higher-level models and languages for
component-based software development, (ii) approaches that combine
architectural description, component configuration, and component
composition, (iii) paradigms for the specification of reusable
software assets, (iv) expressing applications as compositions of
software components, and (v) the derivation of working systems using
composition languages and components. Furthermore, we would
particularly like to encourage authors to submit position statements
focusing on formal aspects of the issues mentioned above and case
studies of using composition languages for real-world applications.


All submissions will be peer-reviewed by at least two members of the
workshop paper selection committee. Based on the quality and
originality, a selection of the best position statements will be
presented at the workshop.

The workshop will be organized in several sessions. After an initial
presentation session, where all participants can formulate one or
more, possibly provocative, working hypotheses, we intend to split the
workshop into task forces to foster the discussion a particular
subject of common interest. At the end o the workshop the task forces
will reunite and we will assemble the results and formulate future
work, which we intent to present to the rest of the ECOOP community in
the form of a poster at the conference.

Call for Papers

The Third International Workshop on Composition Languages seeks
position statements addressing the design and implementation of
higher-level languages suitable for component-based software
development.

A component-based software engineering approach mainly consists of two
development steps: (i) the specification and implementation of
components and (ii) the composition of components into composites or
applications. Currently, there is considerable experience in component
technology and many resources are spent for the first step, which
resulted in the definition of component models and components such as
CORBA, COM, JavaBeans, and more recently EJB and .NET. However, much
less effort has been spent in investigating appropriate composition
environments and languages, which allow application developers to
express applications flexibly as compositions of components and,
therefore, offer support for component-based software engineering.

Most available composition environments focus mainly on special
application domains and offer at best rudimentary support for the
integration of components that were built in a system other than the
actual deployment environment. Furthermore, these systems do not
enforce a clear separation of computational elements (i.e.,
components) and their relationships, which is needed to address the
flexibility and maintainability of component-based systems. The reason
for this situation is not only the lack of well-defined (or
standardized) component interfaces, but the ad-hoc way the semantics
of the underlying language models are defined.

In the recent past we observed a paradigm shift from component-centric
development to model-centric and architecture-centric development. One
of the recent developments in this area is the Model Driven
Architecture (MDA) defined by OMG. MDA is considered to be the next
step in solving software integration problems. MDA introduces a
separation between application logic and infrastructure by
encapsulating infrastructure specific aspects as far as possible in
code generators. This separation allows for the architecture
specification and software composition on a conceptual level and thus
reduces architectural mismatches usually introduced by dependencies to
infrastructure.

The goal of this workshop is to bring together both researchers and
practitioners. By focusing on important aspects of the design and
implementation of composition languages, this workshop aims to address
the specific problems of existing composition systems. Suggested
topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
Model-centric and architecture centric
- Support for the specification of software architectures and
  architectural assets
- Interoperability support
- Design and implementation strategies for cross-platform development
- Programming paradigms for software composition
- Model-centric and architecture-centric development and composition
  methods (e.g., MDA)
- Using existing components in model-centric and architecture-centric
  approaches, model extraction
- Modeling of components, specifically component behavior
- Mapping of architectural models to applications, model transformations
- Benefits of model-centric and architecture-centric approaches
- Case studies and success stories of model-centric and
architecture-centric
  development
- Tool support for model-centric and architecture-centric development

Compositional reasoning
- Representation strategies for functional and non-functional properties
- Prediction of properties of compositions from properties of the
involved
  components
- Reasoning about correctness of compositions
- Specifying and checking of architectural guidelines

Aspect of Composition languages
- Higher-level abstractions for composition languages
- Implementation techniques for composition languages
- Scalability and extensibility of the language abstractions
- Analysis of runtime efficiency of compositional abstractions
- Formal semantics of composition languages
- Type systems for composition languages
- Domain-specific versus general composition languages
- Case studies of composition language design
- Case studies of system development using composition languages
- Tool support for composition languages
- Taxonomy of composition languages

All submissions will be peer-reviewed by at least two reviewers of the
workshop paper selection committee. Based on the quality and
originality, the best position statements will be presented at the
workshop.

The workshop will be organized in several sessions. After an initial
presentation session, where all participants can formulate one or
more, possibly provocative, working hypotheses, we intend to split the
workshop into task forces to foster the discussion a particular
subject of common interest. At the end o the workshop the task forces
will reunite and we will assemble the results and formulate future
work, which we indent to present to the rest of the ECOOP community in
the form of a poster at the conference.

Authors are encouraged to address any aspects of the design and
implementation of composition languages in their position
statements. We solicit submissions on original research in the form of
extended abstracts. Submissions should not exceed 8 pages (with a
minimum 11pt font) and must have a cover page including the paper
title, abstract, names and affiliations of authors, postal contact
addresses, email addresses, and telephone numbers. In addition, we ask
the authors to include a list of critical questions and/or some,
perhaps provocative, statements at the end of their submission which
will assist the organizers to define topics for discussion in
advance. Submissions should be sent in an electronic format (PDF or
Postscript) to lumpe@cs.iastate.edu and preferably prepared for letter
or A4 sizes using Springer LNCS-style.

All selected submissions will be made available online prior to the
workshop and be published by one of the affiliated
organizations. Aspects of the best position statements as well as the
workshop results will be discussed in a chapter of the ECOOP Workshop
reader. The results of the workshop will also be presented to the rest
of the ECOOP community in the form of a poster at the conference. We
are investigating having a special issue of a journal for revisions of
selected papers after the workshop.

Workshop Home Page:

For further information about the workshop, please refer to the
workshop home page at http://www.cs.iastate.edu/~lumpe/WCL2003.

Important Dates:

- Extended abstract submission:         April 25, 2003
- Notification of acceptance:           May 23, 2003
- Camera ready copy:                    June 16, 2003
- Workshop:                             July 21/22, 2003

Workshop Organizers

  Markus Lumpe - Iowa State University, USA
  Thomas Genssler - FZI, University of Karlsruhe, Germany
  Jean-Guy Schneider - Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
  Markus Bauer - FZI, University of Karlsruhe, Germany
  Bastiaan Sch–nhage - Compuware Europe B.V., The Netherlands

Paper Selection Committee:

Markus Lumpe - Iowa State University, USA
Jean-Guy Schneider - Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
Thomas Genþler - FZI, University of Karlsruhe, Germany
Markus Bauer - FZI, University of Karlsruhe, Germany
Bastiaan Sch–nhage - Compuware Europe B.V., The Netherlands
Christian Zeidler, ABB, Germany
Welf L–we - V”xj– University, Sweden