The 7th Workshop on Adaptive and Reflective Middleware (ARM'08)

It is now widely acknowledged that tomorrow's middleware systems will need to support extreme levels of flexibly to adapt to the increasing heterogeneity of devices and access networks, and deal with dynamic changes at different levels within their system architecture. Applying reflective techniques to middleware to "open up" the implementation, as explored in the previous workshops in this series (RM2000, RM2003, RM2004, ARM2005, ARM'06, ARM'07) has proved particularly successful and influential (e.g. work on reflective middleware was explicitly recognized by Marc Fleury in the keynote at 2003 Middleware Conference as a strong influence on JBoss).

Reflection alone is however now generally considered insufficient to deliver the flexibility demanded by today's ever-diversifying middleware environments. The 7th Workshop on Adaptive and Reflective Middleware aims to set forth the success of previous editions by offering researchers a forum to address this technological gap and explore how reflective approaches can be combined with complementary perspectives to support the complete life-cycle of highly adaptive middleware platforms.

As in the last two editions, the traditional scope of the workshop will be expanded to the following topics:

1. techniques that expand current work on software componentization and design patterns in support of adaptation - software architecture; design patterns; aspect orientation; and control theory;
2. decentralized and diverse environments, including: peer-to-peer platforms; network-centric systems; grid computing; sensor networks; and pervasive and mobile applications; and the resulting domain-specific adaptation approaches (e.g., generalized fault-tolerance in peer-to-peer platforms);
3. multi-level approaches that extend one's focus beyond 'pure' middleware, and encompass the remaining system 'layers' (e.g. devices, OSs, networks, applications);
4. connections with other techniques and research fields that are related to dynamic adaptation, such as autonomic computing, self-healing systems, context-aware computing, and location-based services.

For the first time this year the workshop's panel and keynote will be themed around Adaptive Middleware for Mobile Applications. This theme is non-exclusive and does not limit the scope for paper submissions.

The goal of the workshop is to gather active researchers in the field to pool insight, and to share and develop new approaches to middleware adaptivity. As indicated above, our aim is to also bring in researchers involved in designing adaptive software at the architectural, OS and network layers. We believe that a forum that includes experts from these various communities will be extremely useful in fostering a more holistic approach to future research in adaptive middleware.

The workshop will be organized as a one-day event, consisting of a series of sessions, each devoted to the presentation of papers belonging to a common domain. Each session will end with a mini-panel between the presenters, led by the session chair or a pre-selected devil's advocate. In past years this format has been found to lead to lively and productive discussions.

The workshop will include a special session for the presentation of posters and demos of ongoing research efforts and software prototypes.

The workshop will conclude with a panel, moderated by one of the organizers, to discuss open issues and future trends in the field, with the aim of wrapping up the overall contributions of the event.

Attendance to the workshop is based on the submission of a position paper, poster or demo. In addition, other participants may be invited by the organizing committee.

Papers will be peer-reviewed, and selected based on their originality, technical strenght and topical relevance. Papers should not exceed 6 pages of text on letter paper in ACM format without page numbers. Document templates for most popular document processing tools can be found at:

http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates

Poster and Demo submissions should be accompanied by a 2-page abstract. All papers and abstracts should be submitted in either PDF or PS format to the ARM'08 EasyChair online submission website: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=arm2008.

Topics of interest to this workshop include, but not limit to the following:

• Design and performance of adaptive and/or reflective middleware platforms;
• Application of adaptive and reflective middleware techniques to achieve reconfigurability and/or adaptability;
• Application of techniques to achieve separation of concerns;
• Design of Meta-Object Protocols (MOP) for adaptive and reflective middleware;
• Cross-layer interactions and adaptation mechanisms including network, OS and device level techniques;
• Adaptation and reflection in heterogeneous execution paradigms - P2P networks, network-centric computing;
• Incorporating non-functional properties into middleware - real-time, fault-tolerance, security, etc;
• Experiences with adaptive and reflective technologies in specific application domains e.g., sensor networks, ubiquitous and pervasive computing, mobile computing, grid computing etc;
• Fundamental developments in the theory and practice of reflection, as it relates to middleware;
• Experience with existing mechanisms, such as CORBA portable interceptors, or the OMG Meta-Object Facility;
• Consideration of alternative techniques for dynamic configuration and/or reconfiguration;
• Examination of potentially complementary techniques, such as aspect-oriented programming;
• Techniques to improve performance and/or scalability of adaptive and reflective techniques;
• Approaches to maintain the integrity of adaptive and reflective technologies;
• Tool support for adaptive and reflective middleware;
• Incorporation of software development techniques, such as design patterns, component frameworks and software architectures;
• Design and programming abstractions to manage the complexity of adaptive and reflective mechanisms.

All deadlines are 11:59 PM GMT-8 (US Pacific Time)

• Paper, poster and demo submissions: August 8th, 2008 (passed) August 1st, 2008
• Aceptance notification: September 15, 2008
• Camera-ready papers due: October 12, 2008 (EXTENDED!) October 8, 2008
• Workshop: December 1, 2008

• Renato Cerqueira, PUC-Rio, Brazil
• Francois Taiani, Lancaster University, UK

Contact: arm2008-chairs (at) comp (dot) lancs (dot) ac (dot) uk

• Anders Andersen, University of Tromsø, Norway
• Gordon Blair, Lancaster University, UK
• Roy Campbell, University of Illinois at U. Champaign, USA
• Licia Capra, University College London, UK
• Renato Cerqueira, PUC-Rio, Brazil
• Yvonne Coady, University of Victoria, Canada
• Fabio Costa, Federal University of Goias, Brazil
• Geoff Coulson, Lancaster University, UK
• Edward Curry, Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), Ireland
• Francisco Jose da Silva e Silva , Federal University of Maranhao, Brazil
• Frank Eliassen, University of Oslo, Norway
• Sebastian Gutierrez-Nolasco, NASA Ames Research Center, USA
• Peter Komisarczuk, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
• Fabio Kon, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
• Thomas Ledoux, Ecole des Mines de Nantes, France
• Joseph Loyall, BBN Technologies, USA
• Matti Hiltunen, AT&T Labs Research, USA
• Philippe Merle, INRIA Lille - Nord Europe, France
• Omer Rana, Cardiff University, UK
• Douglas Schmidt, Vanderbilt University, USA
• Richard Staehli, Expeditors International, Seattle, Washington, USA
• Alexandre Sztajnberg, State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• Francois Taiani, Lancaster University, UK
• Carolyn Talcott, SRI International, USA
• Luis Veiga, INESC-ID Lisboa, Portugal
• Nalini Venkatasubramanian, University of California, Irvine, USA
• Nanbor Wang, Tech-X Corporation, USA
• Eiko Yoneki, University of Cambridge, UK

• Renato Cerqueira, PUC-Rio, Brazil (co-chair)
• Francois Taiani, Lancaster University, UK (co-chair)
• Fabio M. Costa, Federal U. of Goias, Brazil
• Geoff Coulson, Lancaster University, UK
• Omer F. Rana, Cardiff University, UK
• Nalini Venkatasubramanian, University of California, Irvine, USA