Overview

Separation of concerns is one of the main tenets of software engineering - allowing developers to reason about a problem in sensible portions, regardless which phase of the lifecycle they're working in. Many researchers in software engineering are actually in the field of Aspect-Orientation without realizing it.

Aspect-oriented software development (AOSD) is a new technique to support separation of concerns in software development. With the growing acceptance of AOSD as a software development technique, dedicated support for analysis of aspectual artifacts is needed at the various stages of software development. Developers need to be able to understand, visualize, specify, verify and test aspect-oriented requirements, architectures, designs and programs to make it an industrially viable technology. Tool support is further needed for the identification of latent (non-modularized) crosscutting concerns in legacy software and for their subsequent refactoring into aspects.

AOAsia is an international workshop on AOSD initially organized by Asia-related researchers in cooperation with many researchers all over the world. One of the aims for this workshop is to bring together researchers, who are tackling the problems of advanced separation of concerns, but who are not yet connected to this growing, thriving community. The tone of the workshop will be such that a newcomer to the field of AO will receive an introduction of what AO is, and how it fits in with their research. The workshop also intends to provide a forum for discussion of new ideas, new directions, and new applications.

We invite novel contributions on any AOSD topics including (but not limited to)

- Applications and tools
- Software architectures and product lines
- Aspect interference and composition
- Contracts, components and aspects
- Model driven architecture and UML
- Software development methods and patterns
- Reverse engineering and refactoring
- Reflection and meta programming
- Semantics and type systems
- Verification, validation and testing
- Distributed systems and middleware
- Evolution and adaptability
- Evaluation and metrics

The workshop will be in three phases: An instructional phase, a research presentation phase, and a community building phase. The instructional portion of the workshop will involve short talks on what aspect-orientation is, and how it "looks" at various phases of the lifecycle. This will facilitate new participants' understanding of aspects, and will help them better benefit from and contribute to the rest of the workshop. It will also serve as a basis for discourse among current AO researchers. The presentation portion of the workshop will involve talks by those with accepted research papers. These talks will expose the latest AO research, giving newcomers a quick understanding of the current state of the art in AO, and paving the way for a rich community building exercise. In the final phase of the workshop, we will focus on bringing together groups of like-researchers, and finding commonalities and potential avenues for collaboration. Researchers will be initially grouped based on research or short papers, and newcomers can join groups as they see is appropriate. The groups will then discuss their own respective research in more depth, and newcomers can ask questions about AO from experts in the area in a more intimate setting.

There are two ways to get involved with the workshop: by presenting novel research, or by presenting general insights into AOSD.

Research Papers: (Due: March 2, 2007)

Research papers should present preliminary work into the state of the art of AOSD. Papers must be submitted electronically via the AOAsia 2007 Submission Page. The format of submitted papers should follow the guidelines for the IEEE conference proceedings. All papers will be carefully reviewed by at least three reviewers. Research papers can be submitted as regular papers (6 page limit) or short papers (3 page limit), and the acceptance will depend on reviewer feedback. Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings of the 31st IEEE Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC 2007) by the IEEE CS Press. At least one of the authors of each accepted paper must register as a full participant of the workshop to have the paper published in the proceedings.

Essays, Positions, and Pedagogical Submissions: (Due: June 4, 2007)

We also invite papers that reflect on AOSD in general, and that can provide insights into the world of AO. These papers do not need to introduce novel research, but instead should be composed as instructional, essay-style, or opinion on AOSD. These submissions will be published on the workshop website.

Important Dates

Program Committee

Doo-Hwan Bae (KAIST)
Elisa Baniassad (Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Kung Chen (National Chengchi University)
Shigeru Chiba (Tokyo Inst. of Technology)
Robert Filman (Google)
Jan Hannemann (University of Tokyo)
Siau-Cheng Khoo (National University of Singapore)
Hidehiko Masuhara (University of Tokyo)
Hong Mei (Peking University)
Gail Murphy (University of British Columbia)
Awais Rashid (Lancaster University)
Shangping Ren (Illinois Institute of Technology)
Kwangkeun Yi (Seoul National University)
Jianjun Zhao (Shanghai Jiao Tong University)

Elisa Baniassad, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Kung Chen, National Chengchi University
Shigeru Chiba, Tokyo Insttitue of Technology
Jan Hannemann, University of Tokyo
Hidehiko Masuhara, University of Tokyo
Shangping Ren, Illinois Institute of Technology
Jianjun Zhao, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (Primary Organizer)

http://conferences.computer.org/compsac/2007/workshops/aoasia.html
Or
http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~aoasia/workshop/COMPSAC07/

For general enquires of this workshop, please contact Jianjun Zhao (zhao-jj@cs.sjtu.edu.cn).