[ecoop-info] CfP: 5th Int'l Workshop on Reflection, AOP and Meta-Data for SW Evolution (RAM-SE'08)

[Walter Cazzola]

(apologies for multiple copies)

                                     RAM-SE'08
                               5th ECOOP Workshop on
                Reflection, AOP and Meta-Data for Software Evolution
                             Paphos, Cyprus, 7th July 2008
                      http://homes.dico.unimi.it/RAM-SE08.html

                             Call for Contributions

*Workshop Organizers*
Walter  Cazzola     University of Milano, Italy
Shigeru Chiba       Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
Manuel Oriol        ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Gunter  Saake       Otto-von-Guericke Universität Magdeburg, Germany

*Workshop Description*

Software evolution and adaptation is a research area in continuous evolution,
and offering stimulating challenges for both academic and industrial
researchers.
The evolution of software systems, to face unexpected situations or just for
improving their features, relies on software engineering techniques and
methodologies. Nowadays a similar approach is not applicable in all situations
e.g., for evolving nonstopping systems or systems whose code is not available.
Features of reflection such as transparency, separation of concerns, and
extensibility seem to be perfect tools to aid the dynamic evolution of running
systems. Aspect-oriented programming can simplify code instrumentation whereas
techniques that rely on meta-data can be used to inspect the system and to
extract the necessary data for designing the heuristic that the reflective
and aspect-oriented mechanism use for managing the evolution.
We feel the necessity to investigate the benefits brought by the use of these
techniques on the evolution of object-oriented software systems. In particular
we would determine how these techniques can be integrated together with more
traditional approaches to evolve a system and the benefits we get from their
use.
This workshop can be a good meeting-point for people working in the software
evolution area, and an occasion to present reflective, aspect-oriented and
data mining based solutions to evolutionary problems, and new ideas straddling
these areas.

*Workshop Topics*
Particularly interesting for this workshop are works that focus on the
application of reflective, aspect-oriented and data-mining techniques to the
evolution of software systems. In particular, they include but are not limited
to:

     - aspect-oriented middleware and environments for software evolution;
     - adaptive software components and evolution as component composition; ­
     - evolution planning and deployment through aspect-oriented and reflective
       approaches; ­
     - aspect interference and composition for software evolution; ­
     - feature- and subject-oriented adaptation; ­
     - unanticipated software evolution supported by AOSD or reflective
     techniques; ­
     - MOF, code annotations and other metadata facilities for software
     evolution; ­
     - metrics and other evaluation mechanisms to evaluate the impact of
     software
       evolution techniques;­
     - AOP and reflection based design patterns for software evolution; ­
     - early aspect evolution, i.e., to design evolution by evolving the design
       information or the application in its early stages of development; ­
     - techniques for refactoring into AOSD and getting the separation of
       concerns

*Submissions*
Position papers (max 5-pages long) must be electronically sent (PDF file) to:

                             ram-se08 at dico.unimi.it

We are also planning to edit a journal special issue on the workshop topic and
invite the authors of the most interesting contributions to submit their work
to it.

*Important Dates*
Submission deadline:   30 April 2008 Notification date:     26 May   2008
Camera Ready deadline: 25 June  2008
Workshop date:          7 July  2008

To ensure lively discussion at the workshop, the organizing committee will
choose the contributions on the basis of topic similarity that will permit the
beginning of new collaborations. To grant an easy dissemination of the
proposed ideas and to favorite an ideas interchange among the participants,
accepted contributions will be made available in advance over the Web.

*Workshop Format*
The workshop is a full day meeting. Part of the workshop will be devoted to
contribution of papers, and part will be devoted to panels and (we hope) to
interchange of ideas between participants. The workshop has to provide a
discussion forum about the evolution of the sector and has to permit new
collaborations to be established with other researchers. The workshop will be
particularly useful for young researchers who will be able to compare their
ideas with other people working on the field.