WICSA Call for Papers
WICSA is the premier gathering interested in improving the state of practice of Software Architecture. Since its inception, WICSA has functioned as a working conference where researchers meet practitioners. Practicing software architects can explain the problems that they face in their day-to-day work and influence the future of the field. In addition to traditional conference keynote and paper presentations, WICSA includes interactive working sessions where participants discuss their experiences to understand the current state of the field and identify opportunities to make a difference in the future.
For WICSA 2016 the theme is “Architecting in
time” – exploring the temporal aspects of software architecture. The submitted topics can relate to continuity, evolution and decay; the benefits, consequences and debt from delaying decisions, architecting practices and experiences in different software development processes, or the related collaborative design activities that fit into the life cycles of systems and applications. This conference looks at what can be learned from our software architecture history, studies and experiences, and how the practices can accelerate delivery and operations by reducing complexity and re-using frameworks and services. We are interested in original papers that place architecture and architects in time and explain how the ideas affect their work and their output.
Join us in Venice, a city with a rich legacy of building architecture examples and best practices we can learn from and extend.
Types of submissions
We solicit two types of submissions from the software architecture community: full papers and short papers.
Full papers should describe original and significant results of theoretical, empirical, conceptual, or experimental research and industrial practice in software architecture. Full papers are limited to 10 proceedings pages, at most 8000 words. We especially welcome submissions of papers addressing practical evaluation and industrial application, as well as innovative approaches and ideas discussing emerging challenges.
Short papers are focused pieces of writing intended to stimulate discussion related to experiences and ideas, rather than to present mature results. Short papers are limited to 4 proceedings pages, at most 3000 words. Papers should trigger discussion and raise awareness and reflection on specific topics, in both research and industrial practice, such as: insights on existing methods and techniques; identifying gaps in the state of the practice; and proposals to fill those gaps.
Papers must not have been previously published nor submitted, or be under consideration elsewhere for publication. All papers should explicitly state the goals of the systems or approaches described, discuss relationships to previous work, and should use accepted and standard terminology.
Depending on their ability to trigger discussion, both full and short accepted papers can be clustered and discussed in working sessions, always an integral part of the WICSA program.
We are also actively soliciting proposals for tutorials, workshops and birds-of-a-feather sessions to be part of the conference program. Further details on submission of each type of contribution can be found on the conference website.
Topics
Topics of interest for the conference include (but are not limited
to) the following themes:
- Architectural design elements that support DevOps and continuous deployment
- Up-front versus continuous architecting
- Architecting the IoT
- Architectural reconstruction techniques
- Re-factoring and evolving architecture design decisions and solutions
- Techniques and tools for technical debt management
- Architecting and architectures for Cyber Physical Systems
- Managing architecture risk over the life cycle of a system
- Reusable architectural solutions
- Architecture description languages and model driven architecture
- Software architecture modeling, analysis methods and tools
- Software architecture/architecting, energy-awareness and sustainability
- Software architecture knowledge management
- Software architecture of ultra-large to very-small systems
- Software architectures for emerging systems
- Software architecture for legacy systems and systems integration
- Open architectures, product-line architectures, software ecosystems, systems of systems
- Cultural, economic, business and managerial aspects of software architecture
- Software architects' roles and responsibilities
- Training, education, and certification of software architects
- State-of-the-art and state-of-practice in software architecture
- Industrial experiments and case studies
Formatting and Submission Instructions
All papers must conform, at time of submission, to the IEEE Formatting Guidelines, use the letter page format, and be submitted electronically through the Online Submission Site.
All accepted contributions will be published in the WICSA/CompArch 2016 Proceedings and in the IEEE Digital Library.
More Information
For more information please contact the Program Committee Chairs.
Henry Muccini - henry.muccini(at)univaq.it
K. Eric Harper - eric.e.harper(at)us.abb.com
WICSA Industry Track Call for Papers
The Industry Track at WICSA/CompArch is the premier venue for presenting and discussing state-of-the-art solutions and innovations, and for enabling software architects and engineers to engage with the research community. The industry track will focus on concrete software architecture problems, and descriptions of applied case studies and success stories. Following its tradition, the track will gather highly-qualified industrial and research participants that are eager to communicate and share common interests in software architecture. The track will be composed of invited talks, paper presentations, and panel discussions, with a strong focus on software architecture in practice.
Types of submissions
We solicit two types of submissions: experience reports and case studies papers; and technical briefings.
Experience report and case studies papers (4 pages): Each paper should provide a clear take-away value. It should describe the context of a problem of practical importance; discuss why the solution of the problem is innovative, effective, or efficient; provide a concise explanation of the approach, techniques, and methodologies employed; and explain the best practices that emerged, the tools that were developed, and/or the processes that were involved. Accepted papers will be presented at the conference and included in the WICSA/CompArch 2016 Proceedings.
Technical Briefing: We seek proposals for 90 minute technical briefings, focusing on providing the audience with new knowledge in a specific area of knowledge and/or technology. Proposals should be 2 pages in length (maximum), and give a clear overview and outline of the topic to be presented, along with a description of the presenters’ credentials. Technical briefings may optionally be accompanied by a 2 page overview for publication in the WICSA/CompArch 2016 Proceedings.
All submissions will be reviewed by members of the Industry Track Program Committee. Submissions must not have been previously published or concurrently submitted elsewhere. Submissions will be evaluated on the basis of practicality to industry, originality, significance of contribution, applicability, quality of presentation, and discussion to related work.
Topics
Topics of interest for the industry track include (but are not limited to) the following themes:
- Software architectures for industrial cyber-physical systems and the Internet of Thing
- Software architectures and middleware for smart home and smart office
- Software architectures for the Web of Things
- Software architectures for wearable/mobile middleware integration
- Software architectures for highly scalable, available applications
- Software architectures for big data systems
- Software architectures and the cloud
- Software architectures for scalable messaging, subscription and notification to mobile devices
- Applications of microservices approaches
- Industrial development processes for agile architectures
- Industrial practices beyond academic theories
Formatting and Submission Instructions
All papers must conform, at time of submission, to the IEEE Formatting Guidelines, use the letter page format, and be submitted electronically through the Online Submission Site.
All accepted contributions will be published in the WICSA/CompArch 2016 Proceedings and in the IEEE Digital Library.
More Information
For more information please contact the Program Committee Chairs.
Massimo Valla - massimo.valla(at)telecomitalia.it
Ian Gorton - gortonator(at)outlook.com
QoSA Call for Papers
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 modelling 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 “Architecting for Deployability”. Building software systems in a service-oriented manner and using cloud environments promises many benefits, however, raises new challenges for software architecture by increased complexity and fragility during operation. These rapidly changing systems require collaboration between software developers and operators, a strong integration of building, evolving and operating activities, as well as architectures which satisfy deployability in heterogeneous contexts. In this year's QoSA we particularly solicit contributions that explore the various implications of these upcoming architectures. This includes reference architectures, software architectures adapting at run time, architectural styles and patterns to foster deployability, as well as approaches exploring other 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.
Types of submissions
We solicit two types of submissions from the software architecture community: regular papers and short 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.
Short papers describe novel ideas or innovative proposals whose aim is to stimulate discussion related to experiences and ideas, rather than to present mature results. Short papers are limited to 6 pages.
Topics
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 refactoring and its 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
- Architecting for Deployability
- methods and tools for architecture instrumentation and monitoring
- run-time architecture modelling and analysis
- architectures supporting DevOps concepts
- methods and processes for adaptation and evolution of architectures
- architectures for self-adapting software-intensive system
- 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
Formatting and Submission Instructions
All papers must conform, at time of submission, to the IEEE Formatting Guidelines, use the letter page format, and be submitted electronically through the Online Submission Site.
All accepted contributions will be published in the WICSA/CompArch 2016 Proceedings and in the IEEE Digital Library.
More Information
For more information please contact the Program Committee Chairs.
Jan Bosch - jan(at)janbosch.com
Robert Heinrich - robert.heinrich(at)kit.edu
CBSE Call for Papers
The CBSE conference has emerged as the flagship research event for the software component community. CBSE 2016 encompasses foundational and applied research that extends the state-of-the-art in component analysis, design, composition, specification, testing, and verification. Experience reports, empirical studies and presentation of component-based benchmarks and case studies are also within scope. At CBSE, participants from industry and academia have the opportunity to exchange ideas and experiences in a variety of sessions including invited and technical presentations, posters, and panel discussions.
New architectural trends in genres such as distributed and cloud-based systems, dynamically adaptable systems, the Internet of things, enterprise information systems, and systems of systems often cross organizational boundaries and push the limits of existing component-based methods, tools and platforms. Innovative solutions from diverse engineering paradigms (e.g., service-, aspect-, and agent-orientation, but also event-, domain- and test-driven approaches) are needed to address these trends.
The available palette of execution platforms and deployment tools is rapidly expanding in many different directions. For instance, emerging technologies such as Docker containers, platform-as-service cloud offerings, and computer boards with high performance and low cost (e.g. Raspberry Pi, Edison boards, Arduino) provide new opportunities to design and deploy distributed component-based systems.
For its special topic, CBSE 2016 focuses on “how to leverage component-based system architectures in the context of modern/contemporary execution platforms”. This special topic aims at bringing closer application software designers, platform architects and system operators. We solicit contributions that deal with "component-based DevOps", that i) propose approaches to improve a component systems' lifecycle and its management, ii) propose novel component-based architectural platforms and models, and/or iii) take advantage of new kinds of execution platforms or enhance existing or upcoming execution platforms.
Types of submissions
We solicit two categories of papers: regular papers and short papers.
Regular papers, not exceeding 10 pages (including appendices), should describe fully developed work. Authors of papers reporting experimental work are strongly encouraged to make their experimental results available for use by reviewers. Similarly, case study papers should describe significant case studies and the complete development should be made available for use by reviewers.
Short papers of a maximum of 6 pages should describe novel ideas that have not been fully evaluated, or operational tools and their contributions. Tool papers should explain enhancements made compared to previously published work. Authors of tools papers should make their tool available for use by reviewers.
All papers will be evaluated by at least three members of the Program Committee. Papers must describe, in English, original work that has not been published or submitted elsewhere.
A paper must be personally presented at the CBSE 2016 conference by one of the authors in order to appear in the proceedings. The best contribution of the conference will receive the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award, given by the ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering.
Topics
Topics of interest for the conference include (but are not limited
to) the following themes:
- Component Software Lifecycle
- Specification, architecture, design of component models and component-based systems
- Non-functional/extra-functional properties and quality attributes in component-based software engineering (e.g. quality-of-service characteristics, service level agreements)
- Cross-cutting component design concerns such as security, deployability, maintainability
- Software quality assurance for component-based engineering; component contracts
- Verification, testing and certification of component-based systems; runtime component management
- Migration to and evolution of component-based software systems (lifecycle management)
- Frontiers and Foundations
- Multi-channel component architectures
- Component composition, binding and dynamic adaptation
- Patterns and frameworks for component-based engineering
- Formal methods for automated component composition and integration
- Methods and tools for component-based engineering - including (but not limited to) continuous integration and delivery, DevOps, 12-factor apps
- Paradigms and Domains
- Component-based engineering with agents, aspects, containers and/or services
- Domain-specific component modelling - including (but not limited to) components for/in wireless and real-time systems, component-based product line engineering, domain-driven design
- Impact of cloud computing, edge computing and fog computing on component architectures
- Component Knowledge Sharing
- Industrial experience using component-based software development - including (but not limited to) lessons learned with Docker, platform-as-a-service offerings, RESTful microservices, Spring componentries, Java Enterprise Edition, .NET, app stores
- Empirical studies in component-based software engineering
- Teaching component-based software engineering
Formatting and Submission Instructions
All papers must conform, at time of submission, to the IEEE Formatting Guidelines, use the letter page format, and be submitted electronically through the Online Submission Site.
All accepted contributions will be published in the WICSA/CompArch 2016 Proceedings and in the IEEE Digital Library.
More Information
For more information please contact the Program Committee Chairs.
Noel Plouzeau - noel.plouzeau(at)irisa.fr
Olaf Zimmermann - olaf.zimmermann(at)hsr.ch
Call for Workshops
WICSA/CompArch 2016 workshops provide a unique forum for researchers and practitioners to present and discuss the latest R&D results, experiences, trends, and challenges in the field of software architecture.
Workshops may be half-day or one-day events to be held before the main conference.
Workshop chairs are responsible for submission and selection of papers. Submissions must follow the ACM proceedings format, as workshop proceedings will be published by ACM Digital Library. Workshop organizers may allow for different types of contributions (e.g., short and long papers), but a workshop paper should not exceed a maximum of 8 pages in ACM format.
Formatting and Submission Instructions
All papers must conform, at time of submission, to the IEEE Formatting Guidelines and use the letter page format. Proposals must not exceed four pages and must be submitted as PDFs to wicsa16-workshops(at)swa.univie.ac.at. All accepted contributions will be published in the WICSA/CompArch 2016 Proceedings and in the IEEE Digital Library. Proposals should include:
- Title
- Draft call for papers (including themes and goals of the workshop)
- Further elaboration on connection with WICSA, CompArch, and other similar events
- Workshop format plan (including preference of one-day or half-day)
- Information about previous editions of the same workshop (if any)
- Organizers and proposed Program Committee members and their affiliations
- Initial publicity plan and expected number of submissions and acceptance rate
- Names and simple bios of organizers
Evaluation Criteria
Workshop proposals will be reviewed in a separate evaluation process from research papers. Acceptance will be based on:
- Evaluation of the workshop’s potential to advance the current state of the art in software architecture
- Timeliness and expected interest in the topic
- Organizer’s ability to lead a successful workshop
- Balance and synergy with other WICSA and CompArch events
More Information
For more information please contact the Program Committee Chairs.
Uwe Zdun - uwe.zdun(at)univie.ac.at
Patrizio Pelliccione - patrizio(at)chalmers.se
Call for Demonstrations
The Tool Demos track at WICSA/CompArch 2016 provides researchers, practitioners, and educators with a platform to present and discuss recent, innovative and significant findings and experiences in the field of software architecture by means of live tool demo presentations. We distinguish two categories of tool demo submissions addressing any aspect of tool support to help software architects, researchers, and practitioners:
- Tools used in practice, either from commercial vendors or open-source projects. These demonstrations should focus on practical applications within the different activities of software architecting and should particularly show how they advance the current state of the practice. New ideas and features are particularly welcome.
- Research tools from academic or industrial research environments. These demonstrations are intended to highlight underlying scientific contributions and show how scientific approaches have been transferred into a working tool.
Both categories may range from early prototypes to in-house or pre-commercialized products. Authors of regular WICSA/CompArch research papers are also welcome to submit an accompanying tool paper and supplement additional information regarding the tool (such as multimedia, tool maturity) as described further under submission requirements.
Proposal Submission
Submissions of papers for tool demonstrations must:
- Have a maximum length of 4 pages, describing the technology or approach, how it relates to other industrial or research efforts, including references, and what the expected benefits are
- Have an appendix of maximum 2 pages (not included in the page count) that provides a brief description of how the presentation will be conducted, information on tool availability, maturity and the web-page for the tool (if one exists)
- Clearly state the tool category: in-practice or research.
Optionally, the submission can be accompanied by a video (maximum length of 5 minutes). In this case, a link to a page where the video can be viewed needs to be included in the appendix. Note that the video is not mandatory. All submissions will be evaluated based on the mandatory requirements, as outlined above. If a video is available, the reviewers may check it, but use the video only to the benefit of the evaluation of the submission.
Tool demos papers and accompanying artifacts will go through a peer review process and accepted papers will be included in the main conference proceedings.
Formatting and Submission Instructions
All papers must conform, at time of submission, to the IEEE Formatting Guidelines, use the letter page format, and be submitted by email directly to the Program Committee Chair at danny.weyns(at)lnu.se.
All accepted contributions will be published in the WICSA/CompArch 2016 Proceedings and in the IEEE Digital Library.
More Information
For more information please contact the Program Committee Chair.
Danny Weyns - danny.weyns(at)lnu.se
Call for Tutorials
WICSA/CompArch 2016 Tutorials provide a valuable opportunity for conference participants to expand their software architecture knowledge and skills. It allows practitioners and researchers to learn from each other, about cutting edge tools and methods. Tutorials will be held before the main conference in half-day or full-day sessions.
A tutorial proposal consists of 2-4 pages describing the topic, the plan for conducting the tutorial, and the background of the presenter(s) and the tutorial.
- The Topic section should include the tutorial’s title, goals, and intended audience. The topic should be described in detail, stressing its importance and timeliness.
- The Plan section should include the duration of the proposed tutorial (half or full day), a preliminary schedule of events including estimated times, a detailed description of what the tutorial will cover, a justification of the tutorial for the expected audience, and an explanation of how the tutorial will be conducted, including sample materials to be included in the tutorial notes.
- The Presenters’ Backgrounds section should include relevant biographical information, as well as summaries of the presenters’ technical, presentation, and tutorial experience.
- The Tutorial Background section should include a description of where and when the tutorial has been offered previously and the number of attendees it got.
Formatting and Submission Instructions
All papers must conform, at time of submission, to the IEEE Formatting Guidelines, use the letter page format, and be submitted by email directly to the Program Committee Chair at alexander.egyed(at)jku.at. All accepted contributions will be published in the WICSA/CompArch 2016 Proceedings and in the IEEE Digital Library. Proposals should include:
- Title of the tutorial (one line)
- Presenter(s): Name and affiliation
- Summary: 350 words (max), suitable for posting in the conference web site
- Intended audience: Who is the ideal target for this tutorial?
- Duration: full day, or half day (if either, submit two proposals with different outlines)
- Format: Lecture, hands on exercise, facilitated discussion, group activity, role playing, game, etc.
- Special requirements (e.g., paperboard, multiple projectors, table layout)
- Key message: What are the 2 or 3 key take-away messages the audience should leave with?
- Outline: What is the general structure of the tutorial, topics covered with some indication of timing. Include enough detail to provide reviewers with a sense of depth and breadth of the material covered.
- Presenter’s bio: 250 word bio of the presenter(s), stressing their qualification with respect to the tutorial topic
- Tutorial history: Where and when was this tutorial presented before; how many people attended?
- Slide samples (optional): Attach a few sample of slides (one page)
Tutorial proposals will be reviewed in a separate evaluation process from research papers – though likely by a small subset of the program committee. Acceptance will be based on:
- Evaluation of the tutorial’s interest to the community (research and/or practice)
- Timeliness and expected interest in the topic
- Organizer’s ability to lead a successful tutorial
- Balance and synergy with other WICSA/CompArch events
More Information
For more information please contact the Program Committee Chair.
Alexander Egyed - alexander.egyed(at)jku.at
Young Researchers Forum on Software Architecture
Aim of the Young Researchers Forum
The aim of the Young Researchers Forum is to inspire and bring together young researchers in the field of software architecture and component based software engineering. The forum provides a vibrant place for discussing potential and ongoing research in any stage, from idea to results. The Young Researchers Forum stimulates interaction between academia and industry. So besides an academic reviewer, each author will be assigned an industrial mentor who will also assess and suggest improvements to their submissions.
Participation
Participation is open to anyone who considers themselves a 'young' researcher, wanting to share research ideas and (preliminary or mature) results with their peers and looking for an opportunity to inspire and be inspired. Ph.D. candidates and young researchers in any stage of their research (including undergraduate students) are most welcome to participate. In addition, we specifically invite Ph.D. candidates and young researchers presenting their work in the main WICSA and/or CompArch conferences to participate in this forum.
Participation is not limited to academic researchers. Young researchers from industry are especially welcome to submit to and participate in this forum.
Topics
Areas of interest include all aspects of software architecture and component based software engineering, as given by the scope of the WICSA and CompArch conferences.
WICSA/CompArch Young Investigator Award
The Young Investigator Award may be given to the author(s) of an outstanding idea/contribution presented at the Young Researchers Forum. The award winner will be given the opportunity to present their work within the main conference programme.
Types of Submissions
There are two ways of contributing to the program of the forum:
- ongoing research papers (4 to 6 pages) presenting previously unpublished motivations, goals, preliminary results, planned next steps, and industrial impacts of an ongoing research
- research abstracts (2 pages) outlining (preferably more mature) research of young authors (possibly presenting also in the WICSA/CompArch main program), who would like to actively engage in the forum.
In both types of submissions, we challenge the authors to think about the potential impact of their research on industrial practice (whether in the near or far future based on the nature of the research), and to dedicate a section to the Industrial Impact of their work. The authors of ongoing research papers will be assigned an industrial mentor who will assess the industrial impact of their work, and advise on potential impacts that the authors may be missing. The mentor's feedback will need to be reflected in the revised submission as a condition to the paper being accepted.
Formatting and Submission Instructions
All papers must conform, at time of submission, to the IEEE Formatting Guidelines, use the letter page format, and be submitted electronically through the Online Submission Site (Young Researchers Forum track).
Proceedings
At least one author of an accepted contribution is required to register, present the work and participate during the discussions at the forum.
All accepted contributions will be published in the WICSA/CompArch 2016 Proceedings and in the IEEE Digital Library.
More Information
For more information please contact the Program Committee Chairs.
Barbora Buhnova - buhnova(at)fi.muni.cz
Remco de Boer - rdeboer(at)archixl.nl