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

"Models and Architectures"

Call for Participation

(as txt version)

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

qosa(at)ipd.uka.de

in conjunction with CBSE 2008, CBHPC 2008, and SID
(as Federated Events on CompArch 2008)

As QoSA is part of CompArch 2008, registration for QoSA is available online via
http://comparch2008.ipd.uka.de/registration

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 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.

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.

The program of QoSA is available at the CompArch 2008 site at CompArch 2008 Program where also detailed information about QoSA's program is available.

Detailed Information about the venue, travelling, and accomodation can be found at the CompArch 2008 site at CompArch 2008 Local Information.