November 27-28, 2008. Second Workshop on Formal Languages and Analysis of Contract-Oriented Software. FLACOS'08. Malta

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

*Second Workshop on Formal Languages and Analysis of Contract-Oriented Software  (FLACOS'08)*

Malta, 27-28 November, 2008

http://www.ifi.uio.no/flacos08

The ability to negotiate contracts for a wide range of aspects and to provide services conforming to them is a most pressing need in service-oriented architectures. High-level models of contracts are making their way into service-oriented architectures, but application developers are still left to their own devices when it comes to writing code that will comply with a contract concluded just before service provisioning. At the programming language level, contracts appear as separate concerns that cut  across application logic, while analysis requires that contracts are abstracted from applications to become amenable to formal reasoning using formal language techniques. The aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners working on language-based solutions to the above issues through formalization of contracts, design of appropriate abstraction mechanisms, and formal analysis of contract languages and software.

The workshop will  consist  mainly of a number of presentations by invited speakers. A small number of additional sessions will be reserved for other researchers in the field who are encouraged to submit a short abstract of their work as an expression of interest in participating in the workshop by 18 September 2008. The number of participants in the workshop is strictly limited.

*IMPORTANT DATES*
   Paper Submission Deadline:      September 18, 2008
   Notification of Acceptance:     September 30, 2008
   Registration Closes:                  October 14, 2008
   WORKSHOP:                           November 27-28, 2008

*SCOPE*
Topics of the workshop include (but are not limited to):
  * Formal languages for contracts
  * Contract-oriented software development
  * Formal analysis of contracts, including static analysis, run-time
    verification, and model checking techniques
  * Contract synthesis
  * Contract transformation and contract refinement
  * Contract negotiation, discovery and monitoring

*CONFIRMED INVITED PARTICIPANTS*
  * Emilia Cambronero Piqueras (University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain)
  * Tomasz Janowski (UNU/IIST)
  * Tom Maibaum (McMaster University, Canada)
  * Fabio Massacci (Universitá di Trento, Italy)
  * Ugo Montanari (Università di Pisa, Italy)
  * Wolfgang Reisig (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlina, Germany)
  * Isabelle Simplot-Ryl (University of Lille 1, France)
  * Oleg Sokolsky (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
  * More to be announced

*SUBMISSIONS*
Authors wishing to give a talk at the workshop are invited to submit an extended abstract of their work (3-8 pages, in PDF format, one column, printable on A4 paper) to flacos-08@cs.um.edu.mt <mailto:flacos-08@cs.um.edu.mt> by 18 September 2008. Submission of work submitted for formal publication elsewhere and work in progress is permitted.

The abstracts of the accepted contributions will be available at the workshop. After the workshop, selected papers will be published in a special issue of the Journal of Logic and Algebraic Programming (Elsevier), following the standard reviewing process of the journal.

*REGISTRATION INFORMATION*
  * More information to follow.

*PROGRAMME COMMITTEE*
  * Björn Bjurling, SICS, Sweden
  * Olaf Owe, University of Oslo, Norway
  * Gordon Pace, University of Malta, Malta (co-chair)
  * Anders P. Ravn, Aalborg University, Denmark
  * Gerardo Schneider, University of Oslo, Norway (co-chair)

*CONTACT INFORMATION*
  * flacos-08@cs.um.edu.mt <mailto:flacos-08@cs.um.edu.mt>

--
---
Gerardo Schneider - Dept. of Informatics, Univ. of Oslo
P.O Box 1080 Blindern, N-0316 Oslo, Norway
Phone: +47 22 85 29 71, fax: +47 22 85 24 01 http://folk.uio.no/gerardo/