QoSA: QoSA 2007

Third International Conference on the Quality of Software-Architectures

"Software Architecture, Components, and Applications"

Call for Participation

July 12 - July 13, 2007
Tufts University, Medford (Boston area), Massachusetts, USA

qosa(at)ipd.uka.de

in conjunction with CBSE 2007 and ROSATEA 2007
(as Federated Events on CompArch 2007)

As QoSA is part of CompArch, the registration form for QoSA is available online at
http://www.comparch-events.org/pages/registration.html

Detailed Information about travelling and accomodation can be found here
http://www.comparch-events.org

Motivation

Today, a systems'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 extrafunctional 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.

Conference Programme

Wednesday, July 11

Industrial Day

The Industrial Day is shared with Rosatea'07 and CBSE'07 at CompArch'07. It features a number of attractive keynotes and other events. For an up-to-date program see the CompArch'07 site (www.comparch-events.org).

08:00-08:45	Registration
08:45-09:00	Welcome
09:00-10:00	Keynote Title TBA Magnus Larsson (ABB Corporate Research, Vasteras, Sweden)
10:00-10:30	Coffee Break
10:30-11:30	Keynote Rethinking Componentry in Light of Modern Challenges and Applications David Messerschmitt (ECSE, UC Berkeley, California)
11:30-12:30	Keynote Has Software created "Soft War"? The Implications of the Revolution in Software Architecture for the Conduct of Modern War. Paul Joseph (Peace Studies, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts)
12:30-13:30	Lunch
13:30-14:30	Panel Discussion
14:30-15:00	Coffee Break
15:00-17:00	Tutorials (in parallel) Dorina C. Petriu MARTE: the new UML profile for performance annotations Clay Williams An Overview of the UML Testing Profile
17:30-22:30	Spirit of Boston Cruise Bus leaving from Campus, returning 22:30

Thursday, July 12

QoSA Talks

08:00-08:45	Registration
08:45-09:00	Welcome
09:00-10:30	Keynote Resource Architecture and Continuous Performance Engineering Murray Woodside
10:30-11:00	Coffee Break
11:00-12:30	Session 1: Architectural Design and Architectural Decisions - Session Chair: Michael Chaudron Factors Influencing Industrial Practices of Software Architecture Evaluation: An Empirical Investigation Muhammad Ali Babar, Len Bass, Ian Gorton Using Planning Techniques to Assist Quality-driven Architectural Design Exploration J. Andres Diaz-Pace, Marcelo R. Campo
12:30-14:00	Lunch
14:00-15:30	Session 2: Tracing Architectural Decisions - Session Chair: Ralf Reussner Customizing Traceability Links for the Unified Process Patrick Maeder, Ilka Philippow, Matthias Riebisch Architecture Recovery and Evaluation Aiming at Program Understanding and Reuse Aline Vasconcelos, Claudia Werner
15:30-16:00	Coffee Break
16:00-17:00	Panel Discussion Agile Development and Architecting Systems - Antagonism or Amendment? Moderator: Ralf Reussner Panelists: M. R. V. Chaudron Chaudron studied Computer Science in Leiden, Netherlands (1987-1992) and performed part of his M. Sc. studies (1990-1991) at the Programming Research Lab at Oxford University under supervision of Prof. C.A.R. Hoare. He did his final project at TNO Delft. Subsequently, he worked towards his Ph.D. (promotor: Prof. F.J. Peters, co-promotor, dr. E. de Jong) in Leiden (1992-1997). This research combined ideas from the area’s of coordination, design of parallel and distributed programs and formal methods. During this period, he spend 3 months as a visiting researcher at Imperial College in London (host: Prof. C. Hankin). After completing his academic education in 1997, he worked for two years with CMG (now LogicaCMG) in The Hague. There he worked as an architect in the area of traffic and transport telematics. Amongst others he was involved in projects in Electronic Toll Collection Systems, Smart-card systems for e-payment and access control. During this period he was confronted with the gap between the needs of professional system engineers for architecting complex systems and the methods that academia offers. The desire to close this gap led him to return to academia in 1999 at the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (TUE). Starting the academic year 2006/2007 Chaudron has a part-time position as associate professor at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science. At the TUE he has initiated a number of research projects. In many of these projects there is close collaborations with industry (o.a. Philips, Nokia, Fagor, Ikerlan, Oce, ASML and several IT companies). Through these projects he aims to develop scientifically sound methods for supporting the making of design-trade-offs in the architecting of complex systems. Chaudron has published about his research in international and professional journals and conferences. He serves on the program committee of conferences in the area of component-based software engineering, software processes and distributed systems. In Leiden and Eindhoven, Michel has taught a variety of courses (o.a. Programming (Pascal, Java), Algorithms, Information Modelling, Parallel Computing) and has developed courses in the area’s of Distributed Systems, Component-based Software Engineering and Software Architecture for advanced level students. He has also taught courses in Advanced Software Engineering and Software Architecture at the University of Pretoria in South Africa (2003), Universities of Yazd and Kish in Iran (April 2004) and (Feb 2004) on Component-based Software Engineering at Mälardalens högskola, (Västerås, Sweden). Len Bass Len Bass is a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI). <http://www.sei.cmu.edu> <http://www.hdcp.org>. He has written two award winning books in software architecture as well as several other books and numerous papers in a wide variety of areas of computer science and software engineering. He has been a keynote speaker or a distinguished lecturer on six continents. He is currently working on techniques for the methodical design of software architectures, to understand how to support usability through software architecture, and to understand the relationship between software architecture and global software development practices. He has been involved in the development of numerous different production or research software systems ranging from operating systems to database management systems to automotive systems. His innovations in software architecture include: use of scenarios to evaluate software architecture, SAAM - 1994 characterizing quality attributes through scenarios, 2001 <http://www.sei.cmu.edu/publications/documents/01.reports/01tr014.html> characterizing software architectural tactics to achieve quality attributes, 2002 <http://www.sei.cmu.edu/publications/documents/02.reports/02tr025.html> identifying usabilty scenarios that have a strong impact on the software architecture and are not captured by standard user interface architectural patterns, Usability and Software Architecture <http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/%7Ebej/usa/> Ivica Crnkovic Ivica Crnkovic is a professor of industrial software engineering at Mälardalen University where he is the administrative leader of the software engineering laboratory and the scientific leader of the industrial software engineering research. His research interests include component-based software engineering, software architecture, software configuration management, software development environments and tools, software processes, as well as software engineering in general. Professor Crnkovic is the author of more than 100 refereed articles and papers on software engineering topics and a co-author and co-editor of two books: “Building reliable component-based Systems” and “Implementing and integrating Product Data Management and Software Configuration Management”. He has co-organized several conferences and workshops and related to software engineering (such as CBSE symposium, ESEC/FSE conference, Euromicro SEAA conference), and participated in Program Committees of software configuration management symposia and workshops. His teaching activities cover several courses in the area of Software Engineering undergraduate and graduate courses. From 1985 to 1998, Ivica Crnkovic worked at ABB, Sweden, where he was responsible for software development environments and tools. From 1980 to 1984, he worked for the Koncar company in Zagreb, Croatia. More information is available on http://www.idt.mdh.se/~icc/.

Friday, July 13