Call for Paper for HotSWUp 2011: Third Workshop on Hot Topics in Software Upgrades

[Dagnat Fabien <fabien.dagnat@telecom-bretagne.eu>]

The following call for paper may be of interest to some members of the function community. The submission site
is now open and the deadline is in 2 weeks

Fabien Dagnat


         
                      CALL FOR PAPERS 


HotSWUp 2011: Third Workshop on Hot Topics in Software Upgrades 


                  (co-located with ICDE 2011) 
                       Hannover, Germany 
                        April 16, 2011 


                    http://www.hotswup.org 


              Submission deadline: 15 November 2010 


OBJECTIVES 


Actively-used software systems are upgraded regularly to incorporate 
bug fixes and security patches or to keep up with the evolving 
requirements. Whether upgrades are applied offline or online, they 
significantly impact the system's performance and reliability. 
Recently-introduced commercial products aim to address various aspects 
of this problem; however, recent studies and a large body of anecdotal 
evidence suggest that upgrades remain failure-prone, tedious, and 
expensive. 


The goal of the HotSWUp Workshop is to identify cutting-edge research 
for supporting software system upgrades that are flexible, efficient, 
robust, and easy to specify and apply.  Many diverse research areas 
are concerned with building large, evolving, highly-available systems. 
As such, HotSWUp seeks contributions from all these areas, ranging 
from databases to distributed systems, and from programming languages 
to software engineering, and separately reflected in conferences such 
as SIGMOD, ICDE, SOSP, OSDI, OOPSLA, PLDI, ICSE, and FSE.  By seeking 
contributions from both academic researchers and industry 
practitioners, HotSWUp aims to combine novel ideas with experience 
from upgrading real systems.  The present workshop aims to build on 
the successes of HotSWUp'08 and HotSWUp'09 where the paper 
presentations and lively discussions attracted a diverse audience of 
researchers. 


The topics of interest include, but are not limited to: 


- Upgrading Information Systems under Schema Evolution. 
- Programming language / operating system / database support for 
software upgrades. 
- Improving the reliability of upgrades (e.g., support for upgrade 
validation and for rollback after failures). 
- Support for system or data restructuring (e.g., evolving APIs, 
changes to database schemas). 
- Identifying dependencies between components and guaranteeing safe 
interactions among mixed versions. 
- Coordinating and disseminating upgrades in large-scale distributed 
systems. 
- Software upgrades and the Cloud Computing Infrastructure. 
- Tools for preparing, testing, and applying software upgrades. 
- Human factors in software upgrades (e.g., usability of upgrading 
tools, common operator mistakes). 


SUBMISSION GUIDELINES 


We are interested in papers that address practical as well as 
theoretical aspects of software upgrades from large scale to embedded 
applications. Particularly welcome this year are submissions 
concerning software upgrade issues in database systems.  Preferably, 
submissions should fall into one of the following categories: 


- Suggest how a successful approach can be applied in a different context 
(e.g., static dependency analysis applied to distributed-system upgrades). 
- Refute an old assumption about software upgrades (e.g., by presenting 
negative results). 
- Describe a new problem or propose a novel solution to an old problem. 
- Present empirical evidence related to the practical implementation of 
software upgrades. 


Papers must not exceed 5 pages, in IEEE camera-ready format (templates 
at 
http://www.ieee.org/web/publications/pubservices/confpub/AuthorTools/...). 
Papers must be submitted electronically at http://www.hotswup.org. 


IMPORTANT DATES 


Submission deadline             15 November 2010 
Acceptance notification         15 December 2010 
Camera-ready deadline           3 January 2011 
Workshop date                   16 April 2011 


PROGRAM COMMITTEE 


Rida Bazzi, Arizona State University, USA (co-organizer) 
Carlo Aldo Curino, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA 
Fabien Dagnat, Telecom Bretagne, France 
Johann Eder, University of Vienna, Austria 
Michael Hicks, University of Maryland, College park, USA (co-organizer) 
Manuel Oriol, University of York, UK 
George Papastefanatos, National Technical University of Athens, Greece 
Paolo Papotti, Università Roma Tre, Italy 
Jason Nieh, Columbia University, USA 
Xin Qi, Facebook, USA 
Mark Segal, Laboratory for Telecommunications Sciences, USA 
Liuba Shrira, Brandeis University, USA 
Carlo Zaniolo, University of California, Los Angeles, USA (co-organizer) 


MORE INFORMATION 


Visit the workshop's homepage at: 
http://www.hotswup.org