Modelling Software System Structures
in a fastly moving scenario

The Theme of the workshop

This workshop would be the 7th in a series of Software Engineering workshops for formulating and advancing software engineering models and techniques, with the fundamental theme of increasing the practical impact of formal methods. Previous workshops have been devoted to "Real-time & Concurrent Systems", "Software Merging and Slicing", "Software Evolution", "Software Architecture", "Requirements Targeting Software", and "Engineering Automation for Computer Based Systems".
A major goal for this series of workshops is to help focus the software engineering community on issues that are vital to improving the state of software engineering practice, bringing together American and European leading scientists actively engaged in the area.

The following quotations from the PITAC (President's Information Technology Advisory Committee) 1998 Interim Report to the President of USA help set the context for the workshop initiative.

"The demand for software has grown far faster than the resources we have to produce it. The result is that desperately needed software is not being developed. Furthermore, the nation needs software that is far more usable, reliable, and powerful than what is being produced today."

"... it has become clear that the processes of developing, testing, and maintaining software must change. We need scientifically sound approaches to software development that will enable meaningful and practical testing for consistency of specifications and implementations."

Unfortunately, as the same interim report emphasizes, "current support (for research) is taking a short-term focus, looking for immediate returns, rather than investigating high-risk long-term technologies".
As a consequence, there is a danger of even widening the gap between fundamental research and current (not always best-) practice. Indeed, together with long standing problems, such as the quest for software reliability, we are facing the need and partly the emergence of radically different ways of producing software.

The proposed Workshop, continuing the effort to bring together pragmatic and foundational research in software engineering, will primarily focus the attention on the major issues characterizing the new and rapidly evolving scenario of software development, such as the emphasis on high-level architectural aspects and the component- based and web-based software development.
Together with proposing new concepts and techniques, another major goal would be to show how the wealth of past foundational research in SE can be uplifted to handle the new problems posed, among others, by the different level of component and system granularity, the heterogeneity of components, the use of distribution and communication and the request for appropriate human-interface support.

Topics to be Addressed

The workshop provides a bridge between industry and academia. The program will provide a balanced view of academic research and industrial developments.
Contributions are sought in but not limited to the following areas:

Last Updated: 20 March, 2000 by Elisabetta Ferrando