[ecoop-info] QoSA 2008 Call for Paper

[Steffen Becker]

4th International Conference on the
Quality of Software Architectures (QoSA 2008)

University of Karlsruhe (TH), Germany
October 14-17, 2008

http://qosa.ipd.uka.de
Conference proceedings are published as Springer LNCS

Motivation
==========

Today, a system's software architecture cannot be seen simply as a
means to an end, the end being the implemented system. Although the
ultimate measure of the quality of the software architecture lies in the
implemented system, in how well it satisfies the requirements and
constraints of the project and whether it can be maintained and evolved
successfully, the quality of a system's software architecture is one of
the critical factors in its overall system quality - encompassing both
functional and extra-functional properties. In order to treat design as
an engineering discipline rather than an art, we need the ability to
address the quality of the software architecture directly, not simply as
it is reflected in the implemented system.

This is a specific goal of QoSA - to deal with software architecture in
general and simultaneously focus on its quality characteristics by
addressing the problems of:

    * designing software architectures of good quality,
    * defining, measuring, evaluating architecture quality, and
    * managing architecture quality, tying it upstream to requirements
      and downstream to implementation, and preserving architecture
      quality throughout the lifetime of the system.

Cross-cutting these problems is the question of the nature of software
architecture. Software architecture organizes a system, partitioning it
into elements and defining relationships among the elements. For this we
often use multiple views, each with a different organizing principle.

But software architecture must also support properties that are emergent
and cannot be ascribed to particular elements. For this we often use the
language of quality attributes. Quality attributes cover both internal
properties, exhibited only in the development process (e.g.
maintainability, portability, testability, etc.), and external
properties, exhibited in the executing system (e.g. performance,
resource consumption, availability, etc.). Quality attributes cover
properties that are emergent, that have a pervasive impact, that are
difficult to reverse, and that interact, thereby precluding or
constraining other properties. Thus, QoSA also aims to investigate
quality attributes in the context of the problems of the design,
evaluation, and management of software architecture.

This years QoSA's main topic is on "Models and Architectures". Modelling
software architectures for documentation purposes as well as manual
analysis is an established practice. Due to the continuous maturation of
model-driven software development methods and tools, software
architecture models also become subject to automated model
transformations. Their target is either to generate high quality
software implementations or to automatically derive analysis models for
predicting architectural quality characteristics like performance or
reliability.

Conference Topics
=================

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to

    Architecture Design and Implementation:
       * design decisions and their influence on the quality of software
         architecture
       * organizational issues and processes that influence architecture
         quality
       * architectural patterns and their quality impacts
       * architectural standards and reference architectures
       * model-driven architecture (MDA)
       * integration of COTS components
       * relationship between quality attributes and architectural design
         properties

    Component Design and Implementation:
       * how to design high-quality components that enable the
         construction of well-architected systems
         meeting functional and extra-functional requirements
       * specification and documentation of components and their quality
         attributes
       * compositional reasoning and methods to predict architecture
         properties on the basis of component properties
       * interface standards and standardization efforts
       * component development methodology and development process
       * component engineering and product-lines
       * certification of components
       * component markets and repositories
       * services vs. components / service-oriented architecture vs.
         "classical" component-based architecture

    Architecture Evaluation:
       * lessons learned and empirical validation of theories and
         frameworks on architecture quality
       * empirical validation of testing, prototyping, simulation for
         assessing architecture quality
       * models and specification techniques to evaluate the quality
         attributes of software architectures
       * model-driven architecture evaluation
       * modelling languages for architectural modelling including
         quality characteristic evaluation
       * processes for evaluating architecture quality
       * evaluation of COTS components

    Architecture Management:
       * coordination of business architecture, business processes, and
         software architecture
       * documentation of software architecture, including design
         rationale
       * assessment and enforcement of architectural conformance
       * traceability of software architecture to requirements and
         implementation
       * assessment of COTS components
       * integration of heterogeneous software architectures
       * architecture evolution and architecture governance

Proceedings
===========

QoSA welcomes long papers only. Long papers are up to 15 pages LNCS
style, and can describe both research contributions and experience
reports.

As in the last years, accepted contributions will be published in a
volume of the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. All
Papers must be written in English and are to be prepared according to
Springer's LNCS style (guidelines are available at:
http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html).

Important Dates
===============

Papers due:                 February 11, 2008
Notification of acceptance: March 29, 2008
Camera-ready versions due:  April 13, 2008
Comparch/QoSA conference:   October 14-17, 2008

Venue
=====

QoSA 2008 will be located in Germany and hosted by the University of
Karlsruhe (TH). It will run jointly with CBSE 2008 and COMPFRAME 2008 as
the Federated Events on Component-Based Software Engineering and
Software Architecture (CompArch 2008)
(see http://comparch2008.ipd.uka.de for further details).

Comparch General Chair
======================

Ralf Reussner, University of Karlsruhe, GER

Program Committee Chairs
========================

Frantisek Plasil, Charles University, CZ
Steffen Becker, University of Karlsruhe / FZI, GER

Steering Committee
==================

Ivica Crnkovic, Mälardalen University, SWE
Ian Gorton, Pacific North West National Laboratory, USA
Sven Overhage, University of Augsburg, GER
Judith Stafford, Tufts University, USA
Clemens Szyperski, Microsoft, USA

Program Committee
=================

Colin Atkinson, University of Mannheim, GER
Achim Baier, itemis AG, GER
Len Bass, Software Engineering Institute, USA
Jan Bosch, Nokia Research Center, FIN
Jeremy Bradley, Imperial College London, UK
Vincenzo Grassi, Universität Rom "Tor Vergata", IT
Wilhelm Hasselbring, University of Oldenburg / OFFIS, GER
Christine Hofmeister, Lehigh University, USA
Jean-Marc Jezequel, University of Rennes / INRIA, FR
Samuel Kounev, University of Cambridge, UK
Patricia Lago, Vrije Universiteit, NL
Nicole Levy, University of Versailles, FR
Markus Lumpe, Swinburne University, AUS
Eric Madelaine, Inria, FR
Tomi Mannisto, Helsinki University of Technology, FIN
Nenad Medvidovic, University of Southern California, USA
Raffaela Mirandola, Politecnico di Milano, IT
Robert Nord, Software Engineering Institute, USA
Dorina Petriu, Carleton University, CAN
Iman Poernomo, King's College, UK
Sasikumar Punnekkat, Mälardalen University, SWE
Andreas Rausch, University of Kaiserslautern, GER
Matthias Riebisch, Technical University of Ilmenau, GER
Roshanak Roshandel, Seattle University, USA
Bernhard Rumpe, University of Technology Braunschweig, GER
Jean-Guy Schneider, Swinburne University, AUS
Michael Stal, Siemens, GER
Petr Tuma, Charles University, CZ
Axel Uhl, SAP AG, GER
Kurt Wallnau, Software Engineering Institute, USA
Wolfgang Weck, Independent Software Architect, CH
Murray Woodside, Carlton University, CAN
Steffen Zschaler, Technical University of Dresden, GER

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dipl.-Wirtsch.-Inform. Steffen Becker, DFG Junior Research Group "Palladio",
Fakultät für Informatik, IPD Reussner University of Karlsruhe (TH),
Am Fasanengarten 5, D-76131 Karlsruhe
Email: sbecker at ira.uka.de  URL: http://sdq.ipd.uni-karlsruhe.de
Voice: +49 721 608-5994 (-3934, secr.) Fax: +49 721 608-5990
------------------------------------------------------------------------