The goal of QoSA (Quality of Software Architectures) is to address the quality aspects of software architecture, focusing broadly on its quality characteristics and how these relate to the design of software architectures. Specific issues of interest are defining and modeling quality measures, evaluating and managing architecture quality, linking architecture to requirements and implementation, and preserving architecture quality throughout the system lifetime.

QoSA is the premier forum for the presentation of new results in the area of software architecture quality. It brings together researchers, practitioners and students who are concerned with software architecture quality in a holistic way. As a working conference QoSA has a strong practical bias, encompassing research papers, industrial reports and invited talks from renowned speakers.

This year the main theme of QoSA is “Software Architecture for the 4^th Industrial Revolution”. After mechanization, mass production, and electronics, the Internet is about to enable a new level of productivity in manufacturing. This shall be enabled by smart cyber-physical systems connected to cloud computing services and communicating using standardized semantics. In the near future, industrial big data analytics on monitored sensor data shall improve the efficiency and individualization of production facilities. The IT systems for this 4^th Industrial Revolution will be partially self-adaptive and may require novel approaches for software architecting.

In this year's QoSA we particularly solicit contributions that explore the various implications of this upcoming industrial revolution on software architecture. This includes reference architectures, software architectures adapting at run time, architecture styles and patterns for cyber-physical and distributed systems, as well as approaches exploring critical quality properties, such as performance, reliability, security, safety, maintainability, and usability. At the same time, submissions related to the general topic of the conference are welcome.

Topics of interest for the conference include (but are not limited to) the following themes:

Architecture Design and Implementation

• design alternatives, trade-offs, and their influence on the quality of software architecture
• adapting software architectures to address changes in software and its environment
• architectural refactorings and their implications for quality
• architectural standards and reference architectures
• model-driven methods and tools for architecture design and implementation
• architecture patterns and styles improving various quality attributes

Architecture Evaluation

• empirical validation, testing, prototyping and simulation for assessing architecture quality
• performance, reliability, maintainability, security and other quality attribute evaluations
• methods and processes for evaluating architecture quality (also in presence of the change)
• model-driven evaluation of software architecture quality
• evaluating the effects of architectural adaptations at run-time
• lessons learned and empirical validation of theories and frameworks on architecture quality
• quality assessment of legacy systems and third party applications

Architecture in the 4th Industrial Revolution

• architectures for self-adapting embedded and physical systems
• architectures exploiting semantic web technologies for manufacturing
• reference architectures for internet-of-things applications
• architectures supporting decentralized, self-organizing cyber-physical systems

Architecture Management

• assessment and enforcement of architectural conformance throughout the software lifecycle
• traceability of software architecture to requirements and implementation
• models and tools for coping with software architecture evolution

We solicit two types of submissions: regular papers and position papers.

• Regular papers should describe original and significant results of theoretical, empirical, conceptual, or experimental research or of experience from industrial practice. Reflecting the practical emphasis of QoSA, papers showcasing applications along with a sound conceptual contribution are welcome. Regular papers are limited to 10 pages.
• Position papers describe novel ideas or innovative proposals whose aim is to stimulate discussion related to experiences and ideas, rather than to present mature results. Position papers are limited to 6 pages.

All accepted contributions will be published in the ACM digital library. Papers should respect the standard ACM format for conference proceedings (alternate style).

All contributions will be subject to a rigorous selection process by the international Program Committee, with an emphasis on originality, usefulness, practicality and overall quality. Papers must not have been previously published or be currently submitted elsewhere. If accepted, the paper must be personally presented at the QoSA 2014 conference by one of the authors in order to appear in the proceedings.

PDF versions of papers should be submitted through the EasyChair submission system.

The best contribution of the conference will receive the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award, given by the ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering.

• Abstract submission deadline: December 21st, 2014
• Paper submission deadline: January 9th, 2015 (no extension possible)
• Author notification: February 9th, 2015
• Final version deadline: February 23rd, 2015
• Conference: May 4-7th, 2015

• Call for Papers as PDF-Flyer
• Call for Papers in TXT-Format