Call for Papers

The First Working IFIP Conference on Software Architecture
WICSA1

The First Working IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA1) will provide a focused and dedicated forum for the international software architecture community to unify and coordinate its effort to advance the state of practice and research. An important goal of this working conference is to facilitate information exchange between practicing software architects and software architecture researchers. This conference will serve as a kickoff event for a new IFIP TC-2 Working Group on Software Architecture and will shape the focus and tasks of the working group for the initial period.

The conference will feature two keynotes who will present the state of research and the state of practice in software architecture. Each keynote will discuss where we are, where we should be, where the hard problems are, and where the strong leverage points are.

The working sessions of the conference will be organized to answer similar questions:

• What are the most difficult tasks performed by practicing software architects and what is available from research to help solve them?
• Where are the gaps between business needs and research results, and what can be done to bridge these gaps?
• What are the important problems being addressed in research and why are they (or why are they not) relevant to practicing architects?

Attendance is limited to 100 and is by invitation on the basis of a submitted paper. Submissions will be refereed and all accepted papers will be included in the conference proceedings. Technical papers will be evaluated for their originality, significance, soundness, and clarity. Experience papers will be evaluated on the significance of the experience and the insight gained into a problem domain or application of new methods and techniques. Position papers will be evaluated for their reasoned presentation of a point of view pertinent to conference themes.

We are soliciting submission of papers on all aspects of software architecture describing results of the research, research in progress, case studies, experience reports, and position statements. In particular we encourage submissions from industry that present or analyze experiences of software architecture for complex systems, and expose problems in the design, implementation, or evolution of software architectures.

Specific topics of interest include:

• Theory
  • architectural models
  • architectural descriptions
  • rationale (relating problems to solutions)
  • analysis, evaluation, and validation
  
  
• Processes
  • architecture-based business or economic models
  • architecture-based development
  • architecture extraction and recovery
  • product line (reuse-based processes)
  
  
• Technology support for
  • creation/evolution
  • analysis, evaluation and validation
  • platforms, product lines, cross-product sharing
  • configuration, customization, generation
  • dynamic architectures
  
  
• Example Architectures
  • domain-specific reference architectures
  • styles, patterns, and codifications
  • product line architectures
  • cooperating architectures
  
  
• Training
  • skills and traits for good architects
  • education requirements
  • standard architectural examples

• Length: Technical papers must not exceed 7500 words. Experience reports must not exceed 5000 words. Position statements must not exceed 2500 words.
  
  
• Form: The publisher of IFIP proceedings is Chapman & Hall. Authors are required to follow Chapman & Hall guidelines for authors found at http://www.it-ch.com/chaphall/itch/default.html
  
  
• Medium: Submissions should be made electronically. Either e-mail your submission (preferred, as an attachment if possible) or mail a 3.5-inch diskette containing an electronic version of the paper. Acceptable formats include (a) PostScript (preferred) (b) PDF (c) Microsoft Word Rich Text Format (RTF), and (d) ASCII text (for submission only, not final copy).
  
  
• Cover page: All submissions should include a cover page with the category of the submission, the title, names and affiliations of the authors, an abstract of no more than 200 words, a list of keywords, and contact information including address, fax, telephone number, and e-mail address. If submitting by e-mail, include this information in plain ascii in the body of the e-mail message. If submitting by mailed diskette, include this information on a printed page mailed with the diskette.

Mail to either:

Dewayne E. Perry Bell Laboratories 600 Mountain Ave Murray Hill, NJ 07974 +1.908.582.2529 (voice) +1.908.582.5809 (fax) email: dep@research.bell-labs.com

Alexander Ran Nokia Research Center 3 Burlington Woods Drive #260 Burlington, MA 01803 +1.617.238.4904 (voice) +1.617.564.9696 (fax) email: alexander.ran@research.nokia.com

Important dates are:

15 July 1998	Paper submissions due
15 September 1998	Notification of acceptance and invitation for attendance
1 November 1998	Camera-ready final papers due
22-24 February 1999	Conference

The conference will be held in San Antonio, Texas at the Crowne Plaza St. Anthony Hotel. Hotel and conference registration information and materials will be included in letters of acceptance.

Organizing Committee:

IFIP TC- 2 Chair	Reino Kurki-Suonio (Tampere University of Technology, Finland)
General Conference Chair	Paul Clements (Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, USA)
Program Committee Co-Chairs:	Dewayne Perry (Bell Laboratories, USA)
	Alexander Ran (Nokia, Finland/USA)
Program Committee:	[TBD]