___________________________________________________________________
Call for Papers - SLE 2008
1st International Conference on Software Language Engineering
http://planet-sl.org/sle2008/ Toulouse, France, September 29-30, 2008
___________________________________________________________________
Co-located with 11th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MODELS 2008)
Conference proceedings will be published in Springer's LNCS series.
The 1st International Conference on Software Language Engineering (SLE) is devoted to topics related to artificial languages in software engineering. SLE is an international research forum that aims to bring together researchers and practitioners from both industry and academia to expand the frontiers of software language engineering. Historically, SLE emerged from two established workshop series: LDTA, Language Descriptions, Tools, and Applications, which has been a satellite event at ETAPS for the last 8 years, and ATEM which has been co-located with MODELS and WCRE for the last 5 years. These, as well as several other conferences and workshops, have investigated various aspects of language design, implementation, and evolution but from different perspectives. SLE's foremost mission is to encourage and organize communication between communities that have traditionally looked at software languages from different, more specialized, and yet complementary perspectives. SLE emphasizes the fundamental notion of languages as opposed to any realization in specific "technical spaces".
Scope -----
The term "software language" comprises all sorts of artificial languages used in software development including general purpose programming languages, domain-specific languages, modeling and metamodeling languages, data models, and ontologies. We use this term in its broadest sense. Thus, for example, modeling languages include UML and UML-based languages, synchronous languages used in safety critical applications, business process modeling languages, and web application modeling languages, to name a few. Perhaps less obviously, the term "software language" also comprises APIs and collections of design patterns that are indeed implicitly defined languages.
Software language engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, use, and maintenance of these languages. Thus, the SLE conference is concerned with all phases of the lifecycle of software languages; these include the design, implementation, documentation, testing, deployment, evolution, recovery, and retirement of languages. Of special interest are tools, techniques, methods and formalisms that support these activities. In particular, tools are often based on or even automatically generated from a formal description of the language. Hence, of special interest is the treatment of language descriptions as software artifacts, akin to programs - while paying attention to the special status of language descriptions, subject to tailored engineering principles and methods for modularization, refactoring, refinement, composition, versioning, co-evolution, and analysis.
Topics of interest ------------------
We solicit high-quality contributions in the area of SLE ranging from theoretical and conceptual contributions to tools, techniques and frameworks that support the aforementioned lifecycle activities. Some examples of tools, techniques, applications, and problems are listed below in order to clarify the types of contributions sought by SLE.
* Formalisms used in designing and specifying languages and tools that analyze such language descriptions: For example, of interest are formalisms such as grammars, schemas, ontologies, and metamodels; innovative tools that detect inconsistencies in a metamodel or analyze grammars in building a parser; and formal logics and proof assistants that verify properties of language specifications.
* Language implementation techniques: This includes advances in traditional compiler generator tools such as parser/scanner generators, attribute grammar systems, term-rewriting systems, functional-programming-based combinator libraries, among many others; also of interest are metamodel-based and ontology tools such as constraint, rule, view, transformation, and query formalisms and engines.
* Program and model transformation tools: Examples include tools that support program refinement and refactoring, model-based development, aspect and model weaving, model extraction, metamodeling, model transformations, round-trip engineering, and runtime system transformation.
* Composition, integration, and mapping tools for managing different aspects of software languages or different manifestations of a given language: For example, SLE is interested in tools for mapping between the concrete and abstract syntax of a language, for managing textual and graphical concrete syntax for the same or closely related languages; also, mapping descriptions and tools for XML/object/relational mappings.
* Language evolution: Included are extensible languages and type systems and their supporting tools, as well as language conversion tools. APIs, when considered as languages, are subject to evolution; thus tools and techniques that assist developers in using a new version of an API or a competing implementation in a program are also of interest.
* Approaches to the elicitation, specification, and verification of requirements for software languages: Examples include the use of requirements engineering techniques in the development of domain-specific languages and the application of logic-based formalisms for verifying language requirements.
* Language development frameworks, methodologies, techniques, best practices, and tools for the broader language lifecycle covering phases such as analysis, testing, and documentation. For example, frameworks for advanced type or error checking systems, constraint mechanisms, tools for metrics measurement and language usage analysis, documentation generators, visualization backends, knowledge and process management approaches, as well as IDE support for many of these activities are of interest.
* Design challenges in SLE: Example challenges include finding a balance between specificity and generality in designing domain-specific languages, between strong static typing and weaker yet more flexible type systems, or between deep and shallow embedding approaches, as, for example, in the context of adding type-safe XML and database programming support to general-purpose programming languages.
* Applications of languages including innovative domain-specific languages or "little" languages: Examples include policy languages for security or service oriented architectures, web-engineering with schema-based generators or ontology-based annotations. Of specific interest are the engineering aspects of domain-specific language support in all of these cases.
Do note that this list is not exclusive and many examples of tools, techniques, approaches have not been listed. The program committee chairs encourage potential contributors to contact them with questions about the scope and topics of interest of SLE.
Paper Submission ----------------
We solicit the following types of papers:
* Research papers. These should report a substantial research contribution to SLE and/or successful application of SLE techniques. Full paper submissions must not exceed 20 pages.
* Short papers. These may describe interesting or thought-provoking concepts that are not yet fully developed or evaluated, make an initial contribution to challenging research issues in SLE, or discuss and analyze controversial issues in the field. These papers must not exceed 10 pages.
* Tool demonstration papers. Because of SLE's ample interest in tools, we seek papers that present software tools related to the field of SLE. These papers will accompany a tool demonstration to be given at the conference. These papers must not exceed 10 pages. The selection criteria include the originality of the tool, its innovative aspects, the relevance of the tool to SLE, and the maturity of the tool. Submissions may also include an appendix (that will not be published) containing additional screen-shots and discussion of the proposed demonstration.
* Panel proposals. Panels that discuss controversial and challenging issues in the area of SLE, perhaps based on looking at SLE related problems from the different perspectives of different communities are also sought. The panels should have at least three panelists and a moderator, and the proposal must not exceed three pages. One panel is planned for the end of each of the two days of the conference program. The panel moderators will be invited to contribute a summary of the panel discussion compiling different positions presented on the panel to the final proceedings.
Submitted articles must not have been previously published or currently be submitted for publication elsewhere. All submitted papers will be closely reviewed by at least three members of the program committee. All accepted papers will be made available at the conference in the pre-proceedings and published in the post-proceedings of the conference, which will appear in Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. Authors will have the opportunity to revise their accepted paper for the pre and post-proceedings. All papers must be formatted by following Springer's LNCS style and will be submitted using EasyChair: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sle2008. Further details regarding submission can be found on the SLE web page: http://planet-sl.org/sle2008/.
Special Issue -------------
Negotiations are underway to compile a special issue in an appropriate journal based on extended versions of selected SLE 2008 papers.
Important Dates --------------- * Paper submission: July 14, 2008 * Author notification: August 25, 2008 * Paper submission for pre-proceedings: September 8, 2008 * Conference: September 29 - 30, 2008 * Camera-ready paper submission for post-proceedings: November 1, 2008 * LNCS post-proceedings mailed to authors (approx.): February 1, 2009
Organization ------------
Steering Committee * Mark van den Brand, TU Eindhoven, The Netherlands * James Cordy, Queen's University, Canada * Jean-Marie Favre, University of Grenoble, France * Dragan Gasevic, Athabasca University, Canada * Gorel Hedin, Lund University, Sweden * Ralf Laemmel, Universitat Koblenz-Landau, Germany * Eric Van Wyk, University of Minnesota, USA * Andreas Winter, Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat Mainz, Germany
General Chair * Ralf Laemmel, Universitat Koblenz-Landau, Germany
Program Committee Co-Chairs * Dragan Gasevic, Athabasca University, Canada * Eric Van Wyk, University of Minnesota, USA
Organization Committee * Jean-Marie Favre, University of Grenoble, France * Jean-Sebastien Sottet, Web Chair, University of Grenoble, France * Andreas Winter, Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat Mainz, Germany * Steffen Zschaler, Publicity Chair, TU Dresden, Germany
Program Committee * TBD.