Workshop on Architecture-Centric Evolution (ACE 2006)

Hosted at the 20th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming ECOOP 2006
July 3-7, 2006, Nantes, France

http://www.cs.rug.nl/~paris/ACE2006
The workshop program is online
Software architecture has become a key issue in the object-oriented community, as architecture facilitates effective communication between stakeholders, early analysis of the system, support of qualities and successful evolution of the system. However, the evolution of software systems largely takes place at the code level, through refactoring and re-engineering techniques. This hinders the development team from having an overview of the "big picture" and grasping the significant design decisions that can only appear at the architectural level. As a result, the new design decisions that are taken during evolution may compromise or even contradict fundamental principles of the system's architecture. Moreover, the most substantial properties of the system are its non-functional requirements, the so-called quality attributes, and the evolution of such properties can only be tackled at the level of architecture. This problem becomes even more severe for more complex and large-scale systems. For instance, product-lines (a family of products sharing the same architecture) inherently require domain-specific variation and evolution of the various products. Due to the higher level of interdependency between the various software assets in a product-line, software evolution is too complex to be dealt with at the code level. In essence software architecture is the best means for facilitating the synchronization of the system requirements and its implementation during the evolution cycles.

The theme of this workshop concerns Architecture-Centric Evolution: the evolution of software systems that is based on their architecture. This workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners of the object-oriented community that work on the evolution of software systems with a focus on software architecture. It will foster a presentation of the latest approaches in the field, both from industry and academia, as well as a creative discussion between the participants in specific themes.

Topics of the workshop include but are not limited to:

  • Modeling architectures to support evolution of software systems
  • Using ADLs or UML to model evolution
  • Quality attributes and architectural evaluation in evolution
  • Meta-modeling of architectural refactoring
  • Architecture model transformations
  • Evolution through software architecture patterns
  • Architectural design decisions and architectural knowledge in evolution
  • Evolution of legacy software through its architecture
  • Architecture-centric evolution in the context of service-oriented architectures (SOA) or Model-Driven Engineering
  • Software engineering processes and methods for architecture-centric evolution
  • Theoretical aspects of architecture-centric evolution, e.g. causes of architectural changes
  • Synchronizing requirements, architecture and code during evolution
  • Evolution in product lines and system families
  • Case studies of architecture-centric evolution
  • Tools that foster architecture-centric evolution

Workshop Organizers

Paris Avgeriou
Department of Mathematics and Computing, University of Groningen
Software Engineering and Architecture (SEARCH) Group
paris@cs.rug.nl
http://www.cs.rug.nl/~paris/

Uwe Zdun
Department of Information Systems, Vienna University of Economics, Austria
zdun@acm.org
http://wi.wu-wien.ac.at/~uzdun/

Isabelle Borne
University of Bretagne-Sud, France
Isabelle.Borne@univ-ubs.fr

Program committee

Michael Goedicke, University of Essen, Germany
Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc, University of Montreal, Canada
Nicolas Guelfi, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Dieter Hammer, University of Groningen, the Netherlands
Reiko Heckel, University of Leicester, UK
Ralf Laemmel, Microsoft Corporation, USA
Joe Oberleitner, Technical University of Vienna, Austria
Nicolas Revault, University of Cergy Pontoise, France
Michel Wermelinger, Open University, UK

Guidelines for Submission

Please submit a position paper (max. 4 pages) or a technical paper (max. 10 pages) by emailing it to organizers (paris@cs.rug.nl, uwe.zdun@wu-wien.ac.at, Isabelle.Borne@univ-ubs.fr). Submissions should be original and unpublished research work or industrial experiences. Each submitted paper will undergo a rigorous review process by three members of the Program Committee. We plan to have a special issue of a scientific journal devoted to architecture-centric evolution. Authors of selected papers will be invited to submit their papers to this special issue.

All submissions must be received by April 17th, 2006.

Information for attendees

Registration of workshop participants has to be done in two mandatory steps:
  1. Contact the organizers of the workshop (in order to ensure that the participant limit has not been exceeded).
  2. Register on the ECOOP 2006 web site either as a worskhop-only attendee or as a regular attendee. The latter includes access to workshops and to the main conference.

Important dates

April 17th, 2006: Paper Submission (extended)

May 1st, 2006: Author Notification

May 15th, 2006: Camera-Ready Copy

May 23rd, 2006: Early-registration deadline

July 3rd, 2006: Workshop takes place