CFP CONFIGURABLE DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

                            CALL FOR PAPERS

                    SECOND INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON
                    CONFIGURABLE DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS


Carnegie Mellon University                      March 21-23, 1994
Software Engineering Institute                  In cooperation with IEEE
Pittsburgh, PA         USA                        Computer Society, ACM,
                                                  and IEE (all proposed)

                                                
General Chair:                                  Mario Barbacci
Program Committee Co-Chairs:                    James Purtilo
                                                Jeff Kramer


This workshop will be concerned with methods, tools and techniques for
configuring and managing software for distributed applications.  These
applications are usually configured by programmers who must identify the
desired software components, bind them together and then map them onto the
underlying host architectures.  Therefore, papers addressing any aspect of
this configuration process are invited.  Like the previous workshop, papers
addressing the issues of dynamic reconfiguration --- that is, controlling
how the logical configuration evolves during execution --- are of particular
interest.

-- Language and tool support for configuration and reconfiguration
-- Configuration (and reconfiguration) management
-- Specification and modelling of reconfigurable systems
-- Instrumentation and visualization of distributed systems
-- Methods for software maintenance in highly-available configurations
-- Configuration of mixed-language applications
-- Methods to identify network components/services for use in configurations
-- Use of multi-media / hyper-media in configurations
-- Performance criteria for managing allocations and reconfiguration
-- Tools and techniques for managing very large scale configurations

We invite submission of case studies, documenting substantial experiences
which can contribute to our community's understanding of configurable
distributed systems.  These papers should be identified as such by the
author, and will be reviewed based upon their potential for helping
communicate `lessons learned.'

A proceedings will be published in time to be available at the meeting.
Based upon feedback solicited at the meeting from attendees, the program
committee will select a subset of papers to be submitted as a special issue
of a suitable journal or as a book.  (Papers selected from the previous
meeting, held in London, are due to appear in the March 1993 issue of the
IEE's Software Engineering Journal.)  Prospective authors are invited to
consider the summary from our last meeting, as reported in Conferences
section of IEEE Computer Magazine, in the September 1992 issue.

SUBMISSION:

Five copies of the complete paper should be submitted to either of the two
program chairs.  Papers must be written in English, and should be no more
than twenty pages (double spaced) in length, including figures.  But because
we are also interested in the most timely reports of research achievements,
we will also accept extended abstracts for consideration; these should be at
least five pages in length, and should clearly articulate the main points
and results which would appear in the full paper, should it be accepted.

Since our community is, after all, a distributed and configurable `system',
electronic submission of Postscript by email is acceptable with prior
arrangement to ensure compatibility of the medium.  Please feel free to
contact CDS () cs umd edu for further information.

CONTACT INFO:

  James Purtilo                         Jeff Kramer
  University of Maryland                Imperial College
    Computer Science Department           Department of Computing
    A.V. Williams Building              180 Queens Gate
  College Park, MD 20742, USA           London SW7 2BZ, UK

  purtilo () cs umd edu                    jk () doc ic ac uk
  301 405 2706                          +44 01 589-5111 x5058 


DATES:

  August 20,   1993     Deadline for submission
  November 5,  1993     Authors are notified
  December 17, 1993     Final papers are due for proceedings