Second CfP: First Workshop on Hot Topics in Software Upgrades (HotSWUp 2008, Nashville, Oct 08)

CALL FOR PAPERS

HotSWUp 2008: First International Workshop on Hot Topics in Software
Upgrades

(co-located with OOPSLA 2008)
Nashville, Tennessee
October 19--23, 2008

http://www.hotswup.org


OBJECTIVES

The goal of HotSWUp is to identify cutting-edge research ideas for
implementing software upgrades. Actively-used software is 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 software's performance and
reliability. Recent studies and a large body of anecdotal evidence
suggest that, in practice, upgrades are failure-prone, tedious, and
expensive.

HotSWUp is an interdisciplinary workshop, based on synergies among
the domains of programming languages (e.g., as reflected at
conferences such as OOPSLA or PLDI), software engineering (e.g., as
reflected at ICSE or FSE) and systems (e.g., as reflected at SOSP or
OSDI). By seeking contributions from both academic researchers and
industry practitioners, HotSWUp aims to combine bold, novel ideas,
with experience from upgrading real systems.

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

- Programming language / runtime system / operating system support for
software upgrades.
- Improving the reliability of upgrades (e.g., support for upgrade
validation and for rollback after failures).
- Support for system 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.
- 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 solicit position papers on software upgrades. Preferably,
submissions to
HotSWUp 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 the ACM SIGPLAN 10 point format,
and must be submitted electronically at http://www.hotswup.org .
The workshop proceedings will be published in the ACM Digital Library.



IMPORTANT DATES

Submission deadline July 25, 2008
Acceptance notification September 7, 2008
Camera-ready deadline September 21, 2008
Workshop date: October 19 or 20, 2008 (precise date TBD)


ORGANIZERS

Program Co-Chairs
- Danny Dig, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
- Tudor Dumitras, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
- Iulian Neamtiu, University of California, Riverside, USA

Program Committee
- Ricardo Bianchini, Rutgers University, USA
- Gavin Bierman, Microsoft Research, UK
- Dilma da Silva, IBM Research, USA
- Michael Ernst, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
- Ralph Johnson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
- Priya Narasimhan, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
- Manuel Oriol, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
- Mark E. Segal, Laboratory for Telecommunications Sciences, USA
- Peter Sewell, University of Cambridge, UK
- Robert Wisniewski, IBM Research, USA

MORE INFORMATION

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