SOAP track at SAC 2016 - 2nd Call for Papers

by Hernan Melgratti, Aug. 5, 2015

Service-Oriented Architectures and Programming track
of the 31st ACM/SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing

               SOAP track at SAC

              2nd Call for Papers

Service-Oriented Architectures and Programming track
of the 31st ACM/SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing

          4-8 April 2016, Pisa, Italy

        http://sac-soap.sdu.dk/soap2016

        IMPORTANT DATES

September 11, 2015: Submission of regular papers and SRC research abstracts
November 13, 2015: Notification of paper and SRC acceptance/rejection
December 11, 2015: Camera-ready copies of accepted papers/SRC
December 18, 2015: Author registration due date

        ACM SAC 2016

For the past thirty years, the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing
has been a primary gathering forum for applied computer scientists,
computer engineers, software engineers, and application developers
from around the world. SAC 2016 is sponsored by the ACM Special
Interest Group on Applied Computing (SIGAPP), and will be held in
Pisa (Italy).

        SOAP TRACK: CALL FOR PAPERS

Service-Oriented Programming (SOP) is quickly changing our vision
of software development, bringing a paradigmatic shift in the
methodologies followed by programmers when designing and implementing
distributed systems. SOP originally triggered a radical transformation
of the Web, from being a means of presenting information to a wide
spectrum of people to becoming a computational fabric. In such fabric,
loosely-coupled services publish their interfaces and, through them,
discover and interact with each other abstracting from their internal
implementations. While this transformation still continues today, it
has also already generated other shifts in how programmers deal with
resource handling (Cloud Computing) and the scalability of software
architectures from the very small to the very large (Microservices).
Research on SOP is giving strong impetus to the development of new
technologies and tools for creating and deploying distributed software.
In the context of this modern paradigm we have to cope with an old
challenge, like in the early days of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)
when consistency in the programming model definition was not achieved
until the introduction of key features like encapsulation, inheritance,
and polymorphism, together with proper design methodologies. The complex
scenario of SOP needs to be clarified on many aspects, both from the
engineering and from the foundational points of view.

From the engineering point of view, there are open issues at many levels.
Among others, at the system design level, both traditional approaches
based on UML and approaches taking inspiration from business process
modelling, e.g. BPMN, are used. At the composition level, orchestration
and choreography are continuously improved both formally and practically,
with an evident need for their integration in the development process.
At the description and discovery level there are two separate communities
pushing respectively the semantic approach (ontologies, OWL, ...) and the
syntactic one like WSDL. In particular, the role of discovery engines and
protocols is not clear. In this respect we still lack adopted standards:
UDDI looked to be a good candidate, but it is no longer pushed by the main
corporations, and its wide adoption seems difficult. Furthermore, a recent
implementation platform, the so-called REST services, is emerging and
competing with classic Web Services. Finally, features like Quality of
Service, security and dependability need to be taken seriously into account,
and this investigation should lead to standard proposals.

From the foundational point of view, researchers have discussed widely in
the last years, and many attempts to use formal methods for specification
and verification in this setting have been made. Session correlation, service
types, contract theories and communication patterns are only a few examples
of the aspects that have been investigated. Moreover, several formal models
based upon automata, Petri nets and algebraic approaches have been developed.
However, most of these approaches concentrate only on a few features of
Service-Oriented Systems in isolation, and a comprehensive approach is still
far from being achieved.

Our track aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners having the
common objective of transforming SOP into a mature discipline with both solid
scientific foundations and mature software engineering development methodologies
supported by dedicated tools. In particular, we will encourage works and
discussions about what SOP still needs in order to achieve its original goal.

        TOPICS OF INTEREST

- Formal methods for Service-Oriented Computing
- Notations, models, and standards for Service-Oriented Computing
- Tools and Middlewares for Service-Oriented Development
- Service-Oriented Programming Languages
- Service-Oriented Programming in dynamic Open Service Ecosystems
- Service Choreographies and Protocol-Driven Service Development
- Service Interfaces and Communication Technologies (e.g., REST)
- Microservices and Scalable Service-Oriented Computing
- Engineering methodologies and Patterns for Service-Oriented Software
- Static Analysis and Testing of Service-Oriented applications
- Adaptability, Dependability, and Fault handling in Service Systems
- Security in Service-Oriented Architectures
- Quality of Service and Performance Analysis
- Industrial deployment of tools and methodologies, case studies
- Service application case studies
- Trust and Services
- Sustainability and Services, Green Computing
- Cloud Computing and Services
- Services and Big Data

        SUBMISSIONS

Authors are invited to submit original unpublished papers. Submission
of the same paper to multiple tracks is not allowed. Peer groups with
expertise in the track focus area will double-blindly review submissions.
Accepted papers will be published in the annual conference proceedings.
SOAP track chairs will not submit to the track. Submissions from SOAP PC
members and from PC members and track chairs of other SAC tracks are
welcome. Submission guidelines can be found on the SAC 2016 website:
    
    http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2016/

Prospective papers should be submitted to the track using the provided
automated submission system. Please pay attention to ensure anonymity
of your submitted manuscript as detailed in the submission page so to
allow for double-blind review. Papers not satisfying this constraint
will be automatically rejected. The maximum length for papers is 8
pages. Accepted papers whose camera-ready version will exceed 6 pages
will have to pay an extra charge.

Paper registration is required, allowing the inclusion of the papers,
posters, or SRC abstracts in the conference proceedings. An author or
a proxy attending SAC MUST present the paper. This is a requirement for
the presented work to be included in the ACM/IEEE digital library.
No-show of registered papers, posters, and SRC abstracts will result
in excluding them from the ACM/IEEE digital library.

        SPECIAL ISSUE

We plan a special issue of a top-level journal for which we will invite
the best papers.

        STUDENT RESEARCH COMPETITION PROGRAM

As before, SAC 2016 organizes a Student Research Competition (SRC)
Program to provide graduate students the opportunity to meet and
exchange ideas with researchers and practitioners in their areas of
interest. For guidelines and information about the SRC program:

http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2016/src16.htm.

Submission of research abstracts (maximum of 2 pages) to the SRC
program should be in electronic form via the SAC 2016 website:

http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2016/

Submission of the same abstract to multiple tracks is not allowed.
All research abstract submissions will be reviewed by researchers
and practitioners with expertise in the track focus area to which
they are submitted. Authors of selected abstracts will have the
opportunity to give poster presentations of their work and compete
for three top-winning places. The Student Research Competition
committee will evaluate and select First-, Second-, and Third- place
winners. The winners will receive cash awards and SIGAPP recognition
certificates during the conference banquet. Authors of selected
abstracts are eligible to apply to the SIGAPP Student Travel Award
program for support.

        PC MEMBERS

- Farhad Arbab (Leiden University and CWI, Amsterdam, NL)
- Luís Barbosa (University of Minho, Braga, PT)
- Massimo Bartoletti (Università di Cagliari, IT)
- Marcello M. Bersani (Politecnico di Milano, IT)
- Laura Bocchi (University of Kent, UK)
- Roberto Bruni (Università di Pisa, IT)
- Marco Carbone (IT University of Copenhagen, DK)
- Romain Demangeon (Université Pierre et Marie Curie, FR)
- Schahram Dustdar (Vienna University of Technology, AT)
- Alessandra Gorla (IMDEA Software Institute, Madrid, SP)
- Vasileios Koutavas (Trinity College Dublin, IR)
- Alberto Lluch Lafuente (Technical University of Denmark, DK)
- Manuel Mazzara (Innopolis University, RU)
- Nicola Mezzetti (Engineering Group, IT)
- Corrado Moiso (Telecom Italia, IT)
- Alberto Núñez (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, SP)
- Jorge A. Perez (University of Groningen, NL)
- Gustavo Petri (Purdue University, USA)
- António Ravara (New University of Lisbon, PT)
- Steve Ross-Talbot (Cognizant Technology Solutions, UK)
- Gwen Salaün (INRIA Grenoble - Rhône-Alpes, FR)
- Francesco Tiezzi (Università di Camerino, IT)
- Emilio Tuosto (University of Leicester, UK)
- Massimo Vecchio (Università degli Studi eCampus, IT)
- Peter Wong (Travelex, UK)
- Yongluan Zhou (University of Southern Denmark, DK)

        TRACK CHAIRS

- Maurice ter Beek (ISTI-CNR, Pisa, IT)
- Hernán Melgratti (University of Buenos Aires, AR)
- Hugo Torres Vieira (IMT Lucca, IT)

        STEERING COMMITTEE

- Claudio Guidi (italianaSoftware, IT)
- Ivan Lanese (University of Bologna, IT and INRIA, FR)
- Manuel Mazzara (Innopolis University, RU)
- Fabrizio Montesi (University of Southern Denmark, DK)