No.027 Engineering Adaptive Software Systems (EASSy)

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NII Shonan Meeting Seminar 027

Welcome to EASSy 2013!

Dear EASSy 2013 Participant,

Thank you very much for accepting our invitation to participate in the Shonan Meeting No. 27 entitled?Engineering Adaptive Software Systems (EASSy 2013), September 9‐12, 2013 in Shonan, Japan. We are?delighted to report that over 33 participants signed up for this exciting workshop.

In collaboration with Shonan staff we developed a preliminary program for EASSy 2013 which can be?found below (i.e., please scroll down). The program basically consists of a set of group?performances related to engineering adaptive software systems.

The respective groups are entirely free on how to orchestrate their allotted time frame (i.e., 90 or 60?minutes). We expect that one group member will assume a leadership role and orchestrate the?preparation of the group performance. The only key format requirement is to include at least 10 or 15?minutes worth of discussion for the 60 or 90 minute sessions, respectively. The groups are strongly?encouraged to be creative. An integrated group performance involving different people could?concentrate on different aspects of their overall research program. For example, the first presenter?outlines the entire research program, the second presenter highlights the major results of the group, the?third presenter discusses applications and case studies, and the fourth presenter details ongoing and?future research. Other ideas include highlighting a stellar result, conducting a demo, or orchestrating a?highly interactive discussion with the entire audience. Of course, a sequence of independent?presentations is an option, particularly if you are in a group with participants from different research groups. But even for those groups integration efforts would be appreciated. Such integration efforts may lead to future collaborations. In the current program every participant is allocated to a group and hence is entitled to a speaking slot.?However, if you prefer not to give a talk please let us know. That is perfectly ok given the large number?of participants. In summary, we hope that the assigned groups can get organized, be creative, and?deliver a stimulating performance.

The program also features an excursion including a dinner banquet in the beautiful city of Kamakura.?Although Kamakura proper is today rather small, it is often described in history books as a former de?facto capital of Japan as the seat of the Shogunate and of the Regency during the Kamakura Period.

We are also trying to be innovative with respect to introductions. We kindly encourage you to produce a?short video to introduce yourself. As a concrete example check out the highly acclaimed ICSE 2013 teaser?videos. The video should be at most one minute long. Please send the link to your video, ideally in youtube format, for posting as a link to your name on the schedule to?hausimuller@gmail.com. Participants can then watch these videos and thus familiarize themselves?with the participants and their topics before the workshop. Please check the schedule regularly to watch the videos while we upload them. This also provides an opportunity to feature?the individual rather than the group.

As for outcomes of the workshop we hope that new connections and collaborations will result from our?week together in Japan. One common way to facilitate collaboration beyond the workshop is to compile?a book. Thus, over the next year we plan to produce an EASSy 2013 with the organizers as editors. Time?is set aside during the last day of the workshop to outline and structure the book. A common structure?for such a book could be as follows: (1) an overview or roadmap chapter involving all the participants of?the workshop; (2) a handful of chapters that discuss key topics of the workshop; and (3) selected?chapters by individual groups. The self-adaptive systems community developed two such books recently?as follows.

Here are some useful links:

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

We look forward to seeing you at Shonan Village Center in Japan in September for a highly productive?workshop.

Best wishes,

Shinichi Honiden, National Institute of Informatics, Japan <honiden@nii.ac.jp>
Hausi Müller, University of Victoria, Canada <hausimuller@gmail.com>
John Mylopoulos, University of Trento, Italy <john.mylopoulos@gmail.com>
Yijun Yu, The Open University, UK <y.yu@open.ac.uk>

EASSy 2013 Organizers

Schedule, participants, and introductory videos

Arrival Day – Sep 8

19:00 ‐21:30??Welcome Reception

Day 1 ? Mon, Sep 9

7:30 ‐8:30??Breakfast

8:30 ‐9:00??Session 1

9:00 ‐ 10:30??Session 2

10:30 ‐ 11:00??Break

11:00 ‐12:00?Session 3

12:00 ‐13:15??Lunch

13:15 ‐14:30 Session 4

14:30 ‐15:00 Break

15:00 ‐17:00?Session 5

18:00 ‐ 19:30??Dinner

Day 2 ? Tue, Sep 10

6:00 ‐7:30?? Hike to Lookout Tower?–?Photo by Milena Litoiu

7:30 ‐8:45??Breakfast

9:00 ‐ 10:30??Session 6

10:30 ‐11:00??Break

11:00 ‐12:00??Session 7

12:00 ‐13:15?Lunch

13:15 ‐15:00??Session 8

15:00 ‐15:30??Break

15:30 ‐17:00?Session 9

18:00 ‐19:30?Dinner

19:15-21:15 Singalong

 

Day 3 – Wed, Sep 11

7:30 ‐8:45 ??Breakfast

9:00 ‐10:30 ??Session 10

10:30 ‐11:00??Break

11:00 ‐12:00 ??Session 11

12:00 ‐13:30 ???Lunch

13:30 ?‐19:00 ? ?Excursion (afternoon)

19:00 ‐21:30 ? ?Banquet in Kamakura

Day 4 ? Thu, Sep 12

6:00 ‐ 7:30?? Hike to Lookout Tower — Photo1 ? Photo2?by Hoh Peter In and Hausi?Müller?

7:30 ‐8:45 ? Breakfast

9:00 ‐ 10:30 ??Session 12

10:30 ‐11:00 ??Break

11:00 ‐12:00??Working Session to Design Workshop Book

12:00 ‐13:00 ? Lunch

13:00????Departure

 

Organizers

EASSy 2013 Organizers

Shinichi Honiden, National Institute of Informatics, Japan <honiden@nii.ac.jp>
Zhenjiang Hu, National Institute of Informatics, Japan <hu@nii.ac.jp>
Hausi Müller, University of Victoria, Canada <hausimuller@gmail.com>
John Mylopoulos, University of Trento, Italy <john.mylopoulos@gmail.com>
Yijun Yu, The Open University, UK <y.yu@open.ac.uk>

Workshop Abstract

Workshop Abstract

As software-intensive systems continue to invade all aspects of personal, business and social life, they are required to operate in ever more open and dynamic environments where the one constant is uncertainty. Coping with such uncertainty calls for systems that monitor their environment and adapt so that they can continue to fulfill their requirements. The problem of engineering such systems is being addressed in a number of research communities, including Software Engineering, Systems, Ubiquitous Computing, Service-Oriented Computing, Multi-Agent Systems, Robotics and more.

As a result of research efforts within these communities, there have been many proposals on how to engineer such adaptive systems. Some are policy/requirements-based, others biologically-inspired, still others focus on awareness as the key facility that leads to adaptivity. The main objective of the proposed workshop is to bring together some of the authors of these proposals so that they can compare and contrast their respective approaches. In the process, we hope that participants in the workshop will go away with a better understanding of what ideas work, and under what circumstances. Some of the more specific issues to be discussed at the meeting include:

  • How do we engineer adaptive software systems? What are the concepts, tools and techniques that can support requirements elicitation, architectural design and implementation of such systems?
  • How do we reengineer legacy software systems in order to turn them into adaptive ones?
  • Comparative review of adaptation mechanisms in Robotics, Multi-Agent Systems, Software Engineering, Socio-Technical Systems, Ubiquitous Computing, etc.
  • Usability issues for adaptive software systems. How do we ensure effective human interaction with complex software systems that have adaptive components?
  • Evolution of adaptive software systems. How do deployed adaptive systems evolve? How can we ensure convergence and stability for such systems?
  • Evolution and control of systems-of-systems, where each component system has its own requirements and its own adaptation mechanism. How do we ensure convergence, stability and coherence for such systems-of-systems?
  • Runtime models: most of the approaches to adaptivity are model-based in the sense that they deploy models of system requirements and the domain to support monitoring, diagnosis and compensation in the case of failure. How are such runtime models different from their design counterparts? How do we reason with runtime models to support adaptation functions, i. e., monitoring, diagnosis and compensation?
  • How do we prevent failures for such systems through run-time reasoning mechanisms? Since such mechanisms are inherently intractable, how can we support incremental run-time reasoning that predicts and/or prevents failures?

Workshop format?

The four-day EASSy workshop will be held at the Shonan Village Center near Tokyo. The format of the workshop will consist of presentations and discussions. Senior presenters will be invited to deliver position statements addressing a comprehensive approach to adaptive software system engineering. We envision sufficient time for discussion after each statement, e.g., 1 hour for presentation and discussion. Other presentations will describe on-going work. We expect that in some cases groups will be represented by several members, in which case there may be joint presentations.

As a deliverable for the workshop, we envision a follow-up special issue in an international journal, where workshop participants and the community-at-large will be invited to contribute original papers presenting comprehensive approaches to the engineering of adaptive software systems. The organizers hope that such a collection of papers will offer an authoritative account of the state-of-the-art on adaptive software systems and will guide future research in this fast-moving research field.