The International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD) is the premier conference on software modularity, with an emphasis on modular structures that cut across traditional abstraction boundaries. The conference offers several tracks, including the Research and Industry Tracks, which bring together leading researchers and practitioners working in such fields as software engineering, programming languages, systems, and others. AOSD welcomes submissions of high quality in all areas relating to aspects, ranging from foundational research to evaluations of aspect-oriented concepts, methods and tools based on experiences using them in practice.

Major organizations are now planning, building, and will soon rely upon software-intensive systems, the complexity of which will pose extraordinary technical and managerial challenges. Modularity and abstraction are essential tools for managing such complexity. However, modules based on traditional software abstractions appear to be inadequate to this task in some important ways.

The community of researchers in aspect-oriented software development is working to develop richer notions of modularity for software and software-intensive systems. Much of the work in this area has focused on programming abstractions and language mechanisms, in particular. The 8th International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD.09) seeks to foster the continuation of work in these areas while increasing the emphasis on modularity not only of code, but across lifecycle artifacts (e.g., from requirements to tests), and not only involving artifacts, but whole software ecosystems, including the organizations and processes that define, develop, deploy, operate, protect, evolve and use these systems. AOSD.09 will bring together an international community of academic and industrial researchers and industrial practitioners from across sub-fields of computer science and engineering who are working to advance our understanding and use of modularity and abstraction across all levels in complex software-intensive systems.

AOSD.09 invites high quality papers reporting documented research results emerging from work in computer systems, software engineering, programming languages, and other areas. Research areas and topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

Software engineering

* Requirements engineering
* Analysis and design modeling
* Domain engineering
* Software architectures
* Evaluation and metrics
* Modular Reasoning
* Testing and verification
* Aspect interference and composition
* Traceability
* Software development methods
* Patterns

Programming languages

* Domain-specific aspect languages
* Semantics and type systems
* Compilation and static program analysis
* Execution environments & dynamic weaving



Related paradigms

* Model-driven development
* Generative programming
* Software product lines
* Meta-programming
* Contracts and components

Tool support

* Aspect mining
* Evolution and reverse engineering
* Crosscutting program views
* Refactoring

Applications

* Distributed/concurrent systems
* Middleware, web services, and networking
* Pervasive computing
* Runtime verification
* Performance improvement

Submission Requirements

Submissions will be carried out electronically via CyberChair (link will appear soon). All papers must be submitted in PDF format. Submissions must be no more than 12 pages (including bibliography and any appendices) in standard ACM SIGPLAN conference format. Submissions must use a 9pt size font.

The submission deadline, length limitations and formatting instructions are firm: any submissions that deviate from these will be rejected by the research program chair. Submitted papers must adhere to SIGPLAN's republication policy. Each paper should explain its contributions in both general and technical terms, clearly identifying what has been accomplished, explaining why it is significant, and comparing it with previous work. Where appropriate, systems and experimental data should be made available on the web. Authors should strive to make the technical content of their papers understandable to a broad audience.

Prospective authors are welcome to direct any queries about the research program to the Research Program Chair (Ana Moreira) at research at aosd.net.

Important Dates

Abstract submission: Saturday, September 27, 2008, 23:59 (Samoan)
Submission: Friday, October 3, 2008, 23:59 (Samoan)
Acceptance notification: Monday, December 8, 2008
Camera-ready: Thursday, January 8, 2009, 23:59 (Samoan)
Modularity Across the Software Ecosystem: Call for Research Papers