Theme
In his seminar of January 2007 at the memorial for Gilles Kahn, Robin Milner
spoke on the subject of the future of informatics.
In particular, he talked about the Grand Challenges in Computing – amongst which there is a Challenge in Ubiquitous Computing. Milner noted that “software engineering does not match procedures in other engineering disciplines … A Grand Challenge is [therefore] to establish modelling as the basis of informatics.”
A more thorough science-based approach to informatics and ubiquitous computing is both necessary and possible. We often think in terms of models, whether formal or not. These models, each involving a subset of the immense range of concepts needed for ubiquitous computer systems, should form the structure of our science. Even more importantly, the relationships (either formal or informal) among them are the cement that will hold our towers of models together. For example, how do we derive a model for senior executives from one used by engineers in designing a platform for business processes, or by theoreticians in analysing it?
A model consists of concepts and a set of permitted activities in terms of these concepts. Models can be combined and can be realised (e.g., models can be implemented, or explained, or refined by other models). For example, from Milner’s presentation, referring to models of process and interaction:
- security disciplines realised by cryptography
- higher-order logic explains security disciplines
- cryptography implemented by programming language
- intracommunication realised by intercommunicating processes
- swim lanes explain intracommunication
- CSP refined by CSP
Milner’s vision expressed above meets what is being more and more pragmatically observed and promoted by modern model-driven engineering practices. The TOWERS 2007 workshop aims to bring together researchers working on Modeling-in-the-large issues, with a view to discussing them, comparing their approaches, techniques, or ideas, and letting these researchers take advantage of different perspectives - theoretical conceptual or practical - on these issues.
Any conceptual contribution to Milner’s towers of models vision or any practical illustration of its possible deployment will be highly relevant to this workshop.
Goals
The goal of the TOWERS 2007 workshop is to bring together researchers and
practitioners interested in the development of modelling as the basis of
informatics and more specifically on global model management. In particular,
the workshop aims to explore integration and interoperability of models, based
on Milner’s idea of towers of models. Specifically, we are interested in the
following areas:
- Precise definitions of relationships between models (e.g., conformance, realisation, implementation, refinement, composition/merging)
- Repositories for models, and issues related to establishing and managing repositories
- Novel structures and definitions for formulating Towers of Models
- Relations to more practical and normative initiatives like the OMG’s metamodeling stack or the Eclipse Modeling Project
- Coordination and synchronisation between models and model repositories
- Relationships between the Grand Challenges in Computing and modelling
- Comparing semantic frameworks for model composition, coordination, and realisation
- Model composition techniques
- Model realisation techniques
- Taxonomy of modeling resources (models, metamodels, transformations, metadata, etc.)
- Taxonomy and precise definitions of global model relationships (conformance, correspondences, matching, composition, etc.)
- Model repositories and issues related to establishing, maintaining and using various relationships between modeling resources
- Relations between model-driven engineering and Domain-Specific Language (DSL) construction frameworks
- Coordination and synchronization between different modeling resources
- Higher-level abstractions and tool support for model coordination
- Comparing semantic frameworks for model coordination
- Scalability and extensibility of compositional model abstractions
- Model annotation or decoration techniques
- Automatic checking of composite model consistency
- Reasoning about correctness of model compositions
- Prediction of properties of compositions from properties of the involved modeling components
- Expression and verification of global constraints
- Formal semantics and type systems for model composition
- Domain-specific versus general composition languages
Submissions
We solicit papers on the above topics. Papers should be original, and not
submitted for publication elsewhere. They should generally be around 15
pages in Springer's LNCS format. However, we would like to give the maximum
freedom to contributors with respect to the number of pages in order to let
them express their original ideas.
All submitted papers will be peer reviewed by members of the programme
committee. Accepted papers will be published in a technical report available
at the workshop in Zurich; authors of selected papers will be invited to
submit extended and revised versions of their work for consideration by
a Special Issue of the Springer journal Software and Systems Modelling, which
will be published some time after the workshop.
Go to the submission page.
Registration
Information on how to register and registration fees can be found here http://tools.ethz.ch/register.html
Important Dates
Warning: dates changed.
Submissions: 15 May 2007
Notification: 4 June 2007
Camera-ready: 14 June 2007
Workshop: 25 June 2007 (done!)