Friday, 17.05.2013

Call for Papers

Highlights:

Although the quality of a system’s software architecture is one of the critical factors in its overall quality, the architecture is simply a means to an end, the end being the implemented system. Thus 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. But in order to treat design as science 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 the goal of QoSA: to address software architecture quality directly 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, that 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.

Topics

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Architecture design

  • Design decisions and their influence on the quality of software architectures
  • Organisational issues and processes which influence software architecture quality in a positive or negative way
  • Architectural patterns and their quality impacts
  • Architectural standards and reference architectures
  • Integration of COTS components

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
  • 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

Submissions

We plan to publish the conference proceedings within the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series. QoSA welcomes both long and short papers. Long papers are up to 16 pages LNCS style, and can describe both research contributions and experience reports. Short papers are up to 8 pages LNCS style, and can describe experience, ongoing work, and new ideas. Please find the LNCS style guidelines at http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html. All Papers must be written in English. Electronic submissions are required. The acceptance of a paper implies that at least one of the authors will register for the conference and present the paper.

Submission to QoSA 2006 is done by using OpenConf at http://qosa-openconf.ipd.uni-karlsruhe.de

Important Dates

April 1, 2006 Papers due
May 8, 2006 Notification of acceptance
June 5, 2006 Camera-ready papers due
June 27-29, 2006 QoSA
June 29-July 1, 2006 CBSE (co-located with QoSA)

General Chair

Ivica Crnkovic, Mälardalen University, Sweden, ivica.crnkovic(at)mdh(dot)se

Program Committe Chair

Christine Hofmeister, Lehigh University, USA, crh(at)cse.lehigh(dot)edu

Steering Committtee

Ralf Reussner, University of Karlsruhe, Germany

Judith Stafford, Tufts University, USA

Sven Overhage, Augsburg University, Germany

Steffen Becker, University of Karlsruhe, Germany

Program Committee

Colin Atkinson, University of Mannheim, Germany

Len Bass, Software Engineering Institute, USA

Don Batory, University of Texas at Austin, USA

PerOlof Bengtsson, University of Karlskrona/Ronneby, Sweden

Jan Bosch, Nokia Research Center, The Netherlands

Alexander Brändle, Microsoft Research, United Kingdom

Michel Chaudron, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Viktoria Firus, University of Oldenburg, Germany

Hassan Gomaa, George Mason University, USA

Ian Gorton, National ICT, Australia

Volker Gruhn, University of Leipzig, Germany

Wilhelm Hasselbring, University of Oldenburg / OFFIS, Germany

Jean-Marc Jezequel, University of Rennes / INRIA, France

Philippe Kruchten, University of British Columbia, Canada

Patricia Lago, Vrije Universiteit, The Netherlands

Nicole Levy, University of Versailles, France

Tomi Mannisto, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland

Raffaela Mirandola, Politecnico di Milano, Italy

Robert Nord, Software Engineering Institute, USA

Frantisek Plasil, Charles University, Czech Republic

Iman Poernomo, King's College, United Kingdom

Sasikumar Punnekkat, Märlardalen University, Sweden

Andreas Rausch, University of Kaiserslautern, Germany

Matthias Riebisch, University of Oldenburg, Germany

Bernhard Rumpe, University of Technology Braunschweig, Germany

Chris Salzmann, BMW Car-IT

Jean-Guy Schneider, Swinburne University, Australia

Michael Stal, Siemens, Germany

Clemens Szyperski, Microsoft, USA

Hans van Vliet, Vrije Universiteit, The Netherlands

Wolfgang Weck, Independent Software Architect, Switzerland