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CALL FOR PAPERS

International Workshop on Services, Clouds and Alternative Design Strategies for Variant-Rich Software Systems
(SCArVeS 2011), 22 August 2011
http://www.iese.fraunhofer.de/events/scarves/

Co-located with the 15th International Software Product Line Conference
(SPLC 2011), 22 - 26 August 2011, Munich, Germany
http://www.splc2011.net/

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IMPORTANT DATES:
- Deadline for submissions: 21 May 2011
- Notification of acceptance: 18 June 2011
- Final papers due: 27 June 2011
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1. MOTIVATION

Software systems are essential for any business operation today and, even more important, have been the drivers of innovation and business process improvement in several sectors. Despite that, non-embedded software systems have been neglected or under-represented at Software Product Line (SPL) events. As a consequence, many people have the feeling that the concept of SPL fits better for embedded systems. In parallel, service orientation has continued to receive increased recognition as a key paradigm for the design and implementation of dynamic and highly distributed systems. After imposing an architectural paradigm at the application level, service orientation is now also imposing a delivery paradigm for advanced software platforms and infrastructures. A specific workshop on services, clouds, and alternative design strategies for variant-rich software systems at the International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC) will allow the research and industry communities to discuss questions such as: Are the current SPL Engineering approaches suitable for the development of variant-rich software systems? If not, what should be addressed? Are there other/better approaches/solutions for the development of variant-rich software systems? How do service-oriented engineering and SPL engineering relate to each other? What changes does the trend towards Cloud Computing bring to the current scenario?

2. TOPICS

The SCArVeS workshop will focus on the engineering of variant-rich software systems. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Specific requirements of an SPL engineering approach for software systems
- Critical review of current SPL engineering approaches in the light of variant-rich software systems
- Alternative approaches for engineering variant-rich software systems
- Usage of service orientation in SPL engineering of software systems, for example:
--- Implementation of core assets as services
--- Service invocation as a variation mechanism
--- Support for end-user variations
--- SPL based on service-oriented architecture
- Usage of product line concepts in a service-oriented context, for example:
--- Variability and commonality analysis to identify the right set of services
--- Engineering variability into the services
--- Exploitation of variation points for service versioning
--- Practices for successfully governing assets
--- SPL-based service platforms and infrastructures
- Usage of business process models in SPL engineering of software systems, for example:
--- Derivation of feature models from business process models
--- Flexibility-supporting mechanisms and integrated handling of anticipated and non-anticipated variability
- Usage of product line concepts to support variability in business process models
- Variant-rich software systems based on Cloud Computing resources
--- Service platforms and infrastructures as variant-rich software systems
- Proofs of concept, industrial experiences or empirical evaluations related to the engineering of variant-rich software systems


3. FORMAT

The SCArVeS workshop is intended to be a highly interactive event. The full day event will start with an invited talk by Andreas Rummler (SAP, Germany). The invited talk will then be followed by presentations of selected peer-reviewed papers. To foster interaction within the workshop, a discussant will be assigned to each paper presented. The task of the discussant will be to initiate the discussion of the paper results or presented open issues. The workshop will close with a working session that is intended to compile the challenges, current approaches, and topics for further research on the engineering of variant-rich software systems.

4. SUBMISSIONS

Papers are expected to comprise research papers, experience reports, and vision/position papers. Participants are invited to review the state of the art and practice, report requirements and constraints from real-world product lines, discuss drawbacks and the need for extension of the current approaches, or present recent new ideas and results.

All papers must follow the ACM SIG proceedings format and be up to 8 pages in length. For formatting instructions, consult http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates.

The program committee will select the best papers based on their quality, relevance to the workshop, and potential to initiate discussions.

Papers should be submitted via EasyChair at https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=scarves2011.

5. PROGRAM COMMITTEE

E. Almeida, Federal Univ. of Bahia, Brazil
J. Bartholdt, Siemens AG, Germany
S. Segura, Univ. of Seville, Spain
S. Dustdar, TU Vienna, Austria
A. Helferich, Consultant, Germany
J. Lee, Univ. of Lancaster, England
T. M‰nnistˆ, Aalto University, Finland
M. Naab, Fraunhofer IESE, Germany
A. Ruiz-Cortes, Univ. of Seville, Spain
P. Dolog, Aalborg Univ., Denmark
S. Abrah„o, Univ. of Valencia, Spain
R. Rabiser, Johannes Kepler Univ., Austria
A. Rummler, SAP, Germany
V. Alves, Univ. of Brasilia, Brazil
K. Schmid, Univ. of Hildesheim, Germany
M. Verlage, vwd AG, Germany
U. Zdun, Univ. of Vienna, Austria

6. WORKSHOP ORGANIZATION

Luciano Baresi, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Sholom Cohen, SEI, USA
Karina Villela, Fraunhofer IESE, Germany