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CALL FOR PAPERS

1st International Workshop on Variability in Software Architecture (VARSA 2011)
June 20, 2011, Boulder, Colorado, USA

at the 9th Working IEEE / IFIP Conference on Software Architecture
http://www.cs.rug.nl/~matthias/varsa2011
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MOTIVATION AND OBJECTIVES
Variability is the ability of a software artifact to be changed for a specific context. Mechanisms to accommodate variability include software product lines, configuration wizards and tools in commercial software, configuration interfaces of software components, or the dynamic runtime composition of web services. Variability is primarily reflected in and facilitated through the software architecture. Also, the software architecture is the centerpiece of software systems and acts as reference point for many development activities, and many of today's software systems are built to accommodate variability. Thus, variability in software architecture should be well-understood and be treated as a first-class concern. The software architecture community acknowledges that variability is a concern of different stakeholders, and in turn affects other concerns. Nevertheless, treating variability related to the architecture and all architecture aspects, as a cross-cutting concern, is currently not well understood. Therefore, VARSA 2011 aims at identifying critical challenges and progressing the state-of-the-art on variability in software architecture by exploring current and emerging methods, languages, notations, technologies and tools to model, implement, and manage variability at the software architecture level. We are particularly interested in industrial practice and experience. The goal of this edition of VARSA is to bring together researchers and practitioners interested in
- variability as it occurs in software architectures (types of variability, evolution of variability, etc.), particularly in relation to quality attributes (e.g., performance, security),
- implications of variability on emerging architecture paradigms (e.g., service-oriented architecture, self-adaptive systems, REST, cloud architectures, software ecosystems), and
- how variability can be facilitated in architecture descriptions (e.g., the use of architecture viewpoints and views to manage variability in architectures).

TOPICS OF INTEREST
Topics of the workshop include but are not limited to:
* Methods, techniques, tools, notations, languages to handle variability in software architecture.
* Modeling variability in different architecture model types (e.g., information models or development models), rather than annotating component-and-connector models or feature models.
* Types of variability in software architecture.
* Architecture viewpoints and views to manage variability.
* Reference architectures for variability-intensive systems.
* Evaluation, resolution and evolution of variability in software architecture.
* Variability in emerging architecture paradigms (e.g., dynamic construction of applications, variability in large scale systems, SOA, cloud architectures, REST, software ecosystems).
* Variability to support runtime adaptation and in self-adaptive systems.
* Variability and quality attributes.
* Variability in software architecture as a cross-cutting concern beyond software product lines and product line architectures.
* Traceability between enterprise architecture and software architecture.
* Architecture patterns, styles and tactics for variability.
* Experience reports and best practices from industry, empirical studies.

PAPER SUBMISSION
We welcome a) future trend papers, describing ongoing research, new results, and future trends (up to 4 pages), b) research papers describing innovative and significant original research in the field (up to 8 pages), and c) industrial papers describing industrial experience, case studies, challenges, problems and solutions (up to 8 pages). Submissions must follow the IEEE conference proceedings format. Please submit your contributions (in PDF) through https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=varsa2011.

IMPORTANT DATES
Submission deadline: March 25, 2011
Notification of acceptance: April 18, 2011
Camera-ready due: April 22, 2011

ORGANIZERS
Matthias Galster, University of Groningen, Netherlands
Paris Avgeriou, University of Groningen, Netherlands
Danny Weyns, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
Tomi Mannisto, Aalto University, Finland

PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Eduardo Almeida, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil
Len Bass, SEI, USA
David Benavides, University of Seville, Spain
Jan Bosch, Intuit, USA
Rich Hilliard, Consulting Software Systems Architect, USA
Kai Koskimies, Tampere University of Technology, Finland
Philippe Kruchten, University of British Columbia, Canada
Patricia Lago, VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands
Martin Naedele, ABB Corporate Research, Switzerland
Klaus Schmid, University of Hildesheim, Germany
Michael Stal, Siemens, Germany
Tim Trew, Virage Logic, Netherlands
Uwe Zdun, University of Vienna, Austria