KISS workshop @ ASE 2009 - Call for Papers

Knowledge Industry Survival Strategy Initiative

This workshop is part of the KISS Workshop Series.

Background and Aims

The main motivation for the use of a DSL is the desire to express problems in a compact form that reflects the natural terminology of human domain experts, and that is easily accessible to software tools. In short, DSLs are raising the level of abstraction of software specifications and of knowledge representation in general. When DSLs are used to formalize the results of domain analysis, the result is a clean separation of concerns in the problem space. The value of a DSL increases with the intuitiveness of the concrete syntax. Visual and graphical elements may be needed to increase usability, and often such languages are referred to as domain specific modelling languages (DSML).

The level of interoperability between current DSL tools is comparable to the level of interoperability between CASE tools in the 90s. To increase the popularity of DSL based approaches, this needs to change. With the extensive use of outsourcing and with the increasing investment in open-source software, software development has become highly decentralized, and an assumption that all parties in a global software supply chain will use identical tooling is simply not realistic. As a result today’s software supply chains are much less automated than supply chains in other, more mature industries.

In order to increase awareness about the role that domain specific modeling languages can play in capturing, preserving, and exploiting knowledge in virtually all industries, it is necessary to establish a strong consensus on the fundamental values and principles that underpin the use of domain specific modeling languages.

KISS aims to provide guidelines to support the use of domain specific methods and technologies in industry. In particular, KISS will support the construction of tool-chains that are built by third parties using components consisting of a mixture of commercial and open-source DSL tools.

The KISS series of conference workshops and related events is used to incrementally create a consensus that can be expressed in a form similar to the agile manifesto and the fundamental agile principles.

Objectives

1. To achieve a strong consensus on fundamental values and principles for designing and using Domain Specific Languages.
2. To progress towards interoperability between DSL tools through the use of open-source technologies.

Topics of Interest

• Fundamental values and principles for designing and using domain specific modeling languages (DSMLs)
• Classification of the different kinds of DSML tool components, and the artifacts created and exchanged between DSML tool components
• Descriptions of existing or planned industrial projects that illustrate the need for improved DSML tool interoperability
• Evaluations of existing meta meta model implementations, comparisons of meta meta model implementations, and proposals of new meta meta models that are conducive for improving DSML tool interoperability
• Proposals for useful levels of DSML tool interoperability
• Case studies of attempts (successful or not) to increase interoperability between two or more DSML tools
• Concrete tool interoperability requirements from organizations that use DSMLs
• Building an open community that owns interoperability standards for DSML tools
• Approaches that can be used for practical certification of tools with respect to interoperability levels

Submitted Position Papers

1. Workshop introduction, summary of KISS results to date, Jorn Bettin
2. A Generalised Event Handling Framework (slides), Karen Li, John Hosking, John Grundy
3. Augmenting DSVL Meta-Tools with Pattern Specification, Instantiation and Reuse (slides), Karen Li
4. Artefacts - Bringing Clarity & Simplicity to Modelling (slides), Jorn Bettin
5. Feature Model to Orthogonal Variability Model Transformation towards Interoperability between Tools (slides), Fabricia Roos-Frantz, David Benavides, Antonio Ruiz-Cortes

Format and Activities

The workshop will be highly interactive, making use of the Open Space Technology format. The workshop will aim to foster discussion and interaction rather than presentations. Presentations will serve to introduce a topic, provoke discussion by presenting a controversial point of view, or introduce new points of view. However, all participants will be given a chance to make a 30 min presentation of their position paper.

Jorn Bettin will introduce the workshop with a summary of the KISS results achieved to date. The talk will underscore the need for interoperability between domain specific language design/implementation tools.

Agenda

1. 09:00 - 09:15 Introduction of participants
2. 09:15 - 09:45 Summary of KISS results achieved to date
3. 09:45 - 10:30 Q&A related to KISS, identification of discussion topics
4. 11:00 - 12:30 Presentation of position papers and related Q&A
5. 14:00 - 15:30 Open Space discussion (part 1)
6. 16:00 - 17:30 Open Space discussion (part 2) & summary of results

Submission Guidelines

The workshop accepts two types of submissions within the aims and scope of KISS: reflective and proposals. A reflective submission describes research or experience within the topics of interest of the workshop. A proposal submission describes an approach or a framework that the authors claim will contribute to the overall objectives of KISS. We seek contributions that ground the workshop in real-world issues.

• For both types of papers, the length of the paper should be at least 4 pages and should not exceed 13 pages.
• The first page should begin with the title of the paper, author names (contact author underlined), affiliations, and e-mail addresses, followed by an abstract of no more than 150 words.
• If the authors would like their paper to be considered for publication they should use the correct Springer format/style (including references and appendices, see the instructions at http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html).

In order to make incremental progress towards achieving the second KISS goal (interoperability between tools) within a time frame that is of relevance to DSL practitioners and DSL tool builders, the upcoming KISS workshops at OOPSLA 2009 (October) and ASE 2009 (November) will aim to provide the

additional possibility to present material via web based interactive sessions for those
who are unable to travel to the conference events.

Submissions to be sent to Jorn Bettin (jbe at sofismo dot ch).

All accepted position papers will be circulated to participants prior to the workshop, and participants are encouraged to read the papers prior to the workshop.

Expected number of participants: 20
Cut-off point: 15 position papers, multiple authors per paper allowed. If more high quality submissions are received, the organizers may encourage submitters of papers on closely related topics to collaborate on a joint position paper.

Publication

Accepted papers in the correct format will be published in the workshop proceedings which will be distributed on registration. The organizers will consider the best papers for publication in the theme issue of the SoSyM journal on Model Based Interoperability (submission deadline 1 November 2009).

Important Dates

Date	Details
20 October 2009 - extended!	Submission of position papers
27 October 2009	Notification of acceptance
31 October 2009	Circulation of final position papers
17 November 2009	Workshop at ASE 2009

Location

Auckland, ASE 2009

Organizers

Name	Affiliation	Country
Jorn Bettin	Sofismo	Switzerland
John Hosking	University of Auckland	New Zealand

Programme Committee (preliminary)

Name	Affiliation	Country
Jorn Bettin	Sofismo	Switzerland
Tony Clark	Thames Valley University	United Kingdom
Craig Cleaveland	Whitebirch Software	United States
William Cook	University of Texas Austin	United States
Mark Dalgarno	Software Acumen	United Kingdom
Jens Dietrich	Massey University	New Zealand
Keith Duddy	Smart Services CRC	Australia
Jack Greenfield	Microsoft	United States
John Hosking	University of Auckland	New Zealand
Pavel Hruby	CSC	Denmark
Steven Kelly	MetaCase	Finland
Anneke Kleppe	Capgemini	The Netherlands
Karen Li	University of Auckland	New Zealand
Derek Roos	Mendix	The Netherlands
Bran Selic	Malina Software	Canada
Shane Sendall	Snowie Group	Switzerland
James Skene	independent	New Zealand
Peer Törngren	IBM	Sweden
Jim van Dam	HiPeS	The Netherlands
Markus Völter	independent consultant	Germany
Jos Warmer	Ordina	The Netherlands