[aspectj-announce] CFP: VMPL 2007 - Workshop on Variability Management a

["neil loughran" <loughran@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

                    CALL FOR PAPERS

                       VMPL 2007

Workshop on Variability Management and Programming Languages

Web site http://www.emn.fr/vmpl2007

In conjunction with Tools Europe (http://tools.ethz.ch/)
                
                  Zurich, Switzerland
                     June 25, 2007

Important Dates

Submissions due: May 13
Author notification: May 29
Tools Europe early registration deadline: May 31
Final version due: June 11
Workshop: June 25, 2007

Scope

Software variability has received a lot of attention recently as a
means to provide effective management and support for increased
software usability and reusability. Static variability management is
at the heart of product lines, whereas dynamic variability management
is at the heart of context-aware systems.  The primary goal of this
workshop is to specifically understand how the realm of current
programming languages support variability management and how they
may be improved.

On the one hand, managing variability in software systems is not a new
problem and a great deal of support has already been built into
programming languages, for example: conditional compilation, partial
evaluation, slicing, various forms of polymorphism, modules, and
aspects. Programming languages also allow different design patterns to
express variability, often with different qualitative properties. We
refer to the different techniques to express variability as variation
mechanisms. On the other hand, there are a lot of proposals for
managing variability outside programming language using various
analysis and design models. A variety of feature models and approaches
of model-driven development (MDD) have emerged. Nevertheless, at some
point all higher-level variability models must be translated into
implementation-level models provided by programming languages.

Bridging the gap between a requirement or analysis and design
perspective on variability management and an implementation
perspective is however not so clear although it is fundamental in
order to provide effective traceability along the development cycle
and generate efficient code. A lot of basic building blocks are
available but a global understanding of how these basic blocks
compare, should be put together, and maybe aggregated in order to
provide more relevant, coarser-grain, mechanisms that remain to be
built. We hope that this workshop will contribute to this aim.

The topics relevant to the workshop include, but are not limited to:

- Implementation of variability models
- Problems and trade-offs of variability management in programming
  languages
- Using and extending General-Purpose Programming Languages for
  variability
- Domain-Specific Languages for variability
- Compile-time and runtime support for variability
- Designing a programming language for variability: comparison and
  composition of individual variability mechanisms
- New programming concepts for variability
- Guidelines and patterns for applying (existing) variation mechanisms
- Variability metrics at the implementation level
- Closing the gap between models and programs

Submission and publication information

The workshop accepts two types of submissions: position papers, and
technical papers.  Papers should be formatted using the SIGPLAN
proceedings style (sigplanconf.cls). Position papers should be up to
4-page long, and technical papers up to 7-page long.

Submissions should be sent as pdf documents to vmpl2007 at emn.fr.

All accepted papers will be made available on the workshop website
prior to the workshop and will be published in workshop proceedings,
made available as an INRIA technical report.

Committees

Program committee

Vander Alves, Lancaster University, United Kingdom
Sven Apel, University of Passau, Germany
Vaidas Gasiunas, University of Technology Darmstadt, Germany
Iris Groher, Siemens, Germany
Florian Heidenreich, University of Technology Dresden, Germany
Anne-Francoise Le Meur, University of Lille, France
Neil Loughran, Lancaster University, United Kingdom
Jacques Noye, Ecole des Mines de Nantes, France

Organisers

Vander Alves, Lancaster University, United Kingdom
Vaidas Gasiunas, University of Technology Darmstadt, Germany
Neil Loughran, Lancaster University, United Kingdom
Jacques Noye, Ecole des Mines de Nantes, France (primary contact)

Venue

VMPL 2007 will take place in Zurich, Switzerland in conjunction with
Tools Europe.

Questions

Contact the organisers : vmpl2007 at emn.fr.