WCOP'97

WCOP'97 seeks position papers on the important field of component-oriented programming (COP). WCOP'97 is the follow-up event to the successful WCOP'96, which took place in conjunction with ECOOP'96. COP has been described as the natural extension of object-oriented programming to the realm of independently extensible systems. The most prominent examples of such systems are constructed around compound document models such as OLE, OpenDoc, JavaBeans, or Netscape ONE and rest on object models such as SOM/CORBA, COM or Java's virtual machine. WCOP'97 shall address their methodological and theoretical underpinnings.

COP aims at producing software components for a component market and for late composition. Composers are third parties, possibly the end user, who are not able or willing to change components. This requires standards to allow independently created components to interoperate, and specifications that put the composer into the position to decide what can be composed under which conditions. These needs raise open research questions like what kind of standards are needed and how they should be defined. Or what information specifications need to give, how this information should be provided, and how correct implementation and usage of specifications could be verified or enforced.

Topics of interest to WCOP'97 include, but are not limited to:

• enabling technology for composition of independently created components
• specification, verification, validation, and testing of components
• domain-specific standards for component interoperability
• dependencies between components such as other components required for proper function
• dynamic changes in the configuration (set of components in a system): how can components be added, replaced and removed and how can other components reconfigure themselves to cope with this
• adaptation of components and composition of frameworks
• programming language support for COP
• performance/efficiency of component-oriented implementations
• user interface of components, user interfaces for composition
• "decomposition" (partitioning) of legacy software
• impact of businesses on components and vice versa, packaging and distribution of components

To enable lively and productive discussions, attendance will be limited to 20 participants and submission of a position statement is required. All submissions will be formally reviewed. High-quality position statements will be considered for publication in conjunction with transcripts of workshop results in a special volume of the TUCS General Publications Series. (The final version has to be typeset in LaTeX.) Authors of accepted papers need to participate in the workshop.

Position statements should clearly state how they relate to the workshop theme, what particular problems they address, what solutions they envisage, and why the statement is expected to be relevant to both this workshop and the community. Statements should be four to eight pages (single-spaced A4) long and state the author's name, affiliation, and contact. Submission via e-mail (plain ASCII or standard Postscript) to Prof. Jan Bosch is strongly recommended.

Important Dates:

• Paper submissions: 18 April, 1997
• Notification of acceptance: 16 May, 1997
• Workshop handouts ready: 30 May, 1997

Workshop Co-Organizers:

Prof. Dr. Jan Bosch
University of Karlskrona/Ronneby
Department of Computer Science
SoftCenter, S-372 25
Ronneby
Sweden
Tel: (+46 457) 787 26
Fax: (+46 457) 271 25
Net: Jan.Bosch@ide.hk-r.se
Web: http://www.ide.hk-r.se/~bosch

Prof. Dr. Clemens Szyperski
School of Computing Science
Queensland Univ. of Technology
GPO Box 2434
Brisbane Q 4001
Australia
Tel: (+61 7) 3864 5222
Fax: (+61 7) 3864 1801
Net: c.szyperski@qut.edu.au
Web: http://www.fit.qut.edu.au/~szypersk/

Dr. Wolfgang Weck
Åbo Akademi University
Department of Computer Science
Lemminkäinengatan 14A
FIN-20520 Åbo
Finland
Tel: (+358 2) 265 4673
Fax: (+358 2) 265 4732
Net: Wolfgang.Weck@abo.fi
Web: http://www.abo.fi/~wweck/