Middleware 2012 - ACM/IFIP/USENIX 13th International Conference on Middleware

13th ACM/IFIP/USENIX International Middleware Conference
3-7 December 2012
CALL FOR PAPERS
The annual ACM/IFIP/USENIX Middleware conference is a premier forum for the discussion of innovations and recent advances in the design, implementation, experimentation, deployment, and usage of middleware systems. Middleware is the software that resides between applications and the underlying architecture. The goal of middleware is to facilitate the development of applications by providing higher-level abstractions for better programmability, performance, scalability, security, and a variety of essential features. It is a rapidly evolving and growing field.
Following the success of past conferences in this series, the 13th International Middleware Conference will be the premier event for middleware research, technology and experimentation in 2012. The scope of the conference is the design, implementation, deployment, and evaluation of system platforms and architectures for current and future computing, storage, and communication environments. Highlights of the conference will include a high quality technical program, invited speakers, an industrial track, poster and demo presentations, a doctoral symposium, and workshops.
Original submissions of research papers on a diversity of topics are sought, particularly those identifying new research directions. The topics of the conference include, but are not limited to:
MIDDLEWARE PLATFORMS:
Middleware for emerging cloud computing, datacenters, and server farms
Middleware for traditional clusters and grid computing
Middleware for mobile devices, ubiquitous, and mobile computing
Middleware for sensor networks and embedded systems
Middleware for Internet applications and social networks
Middleware for Web services, Web service composition, and SOA
Middleware for data-intensive computing
Event-based, publish/subscribe, and message-oriented middleware
Middleware support for multimedia and tele-immersion
Reconfigurable, adaptable, and reflective middleware approaches
Middleware solutions for distributed databases
Peer-to-peer middleware solutions
Middleware for social computing, social software, and crowdsourcing
SYSTEMS ISSUES FOR MIDDLEWARE:
Reliability and fault-tolerance
Scalability and performance
Energy- and power-aware techniques
Virtualization, auto-scaling, provisioning, and scheduling
Security, Privacy, and Information assurance
Storage and file systems
Parallelized execution and techniques
Dynamic configuration and self- or autonomic- management of middleware
Real-time solutions and quality of service
Case studies on the evaluation and deployment of middleware: challenges, techniques, and lessons learned
DESIGN PRINCIPLES AND TOOLS:
Programming frameworks, parallel programming, and design methodologies for middleware
Empirical and deployment studies for middleware solutions
Debugging, diagnosis and distributed debugging of middleware
Probabilistic techniques and approaches for middleware
Methodologies and tools for middleware design, implementation, verification, and evaluation
Formal methods, verification, and software engineering for middleware
Security and privacy
Old Wine: Revisiting classical middleware paradigms, e.g., object models, aspect orientation, etc.
Industry Papers
The conference strongly encourages submission of industry-focused papers and use case studies; full papers should be submitted to the main program, where they will be reviewed using appropriate criteria (e.g., emphasizing experience and system evolution), and accepted papers will be published in the main conference proceedings.
Additionally, short industry-focused papers (6 pages, ACM style) may be submitted to a special industrial track whose Call for Papers will be issued separately, later. Accepted short papers will be presented at the conference and published in the ACM Digital Library.
Big-Ideas Papers
We particularly encourage “big ideas papers”; that is papers that have the potential for opening up new research directions. For such papers, the potential to motivate new research is more important than full experimental evaluation, though some preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of the approach or idea is important. Authors should indicate in the introduction that their paper is a vision of a big idea, rather than more mature work. Such papers should clearly indicate why the idea is revolutionary and not evolutionary; what the major questions still to be answered are; and possible avenues of attack for the community to pursue towards the development of the idea. Experimentation and Deployment Papers
We also particularly encourage the submission of papers describing complete systems, platforms, and comprehensive experimental evaluations of alternative designs and solutions to well-known problems. The emphasis during the evaluation of these papers will be less on the novelty and more on the demonstrated usefulness and potential impact of the contributions, the extensive experimentation involved, the comprehensiveness of the approach, and the quality and weight of the lessons learned (including negative results).
Open Availability of Datasets and Code
Middleware 2012 authors are encouraged to make their system/library implementations and data sets publicly available for the community’s wide benefit as open-source software and their experimental data available as open datasets. The conference web site will provide storage space in which this information will be made available to the Middleware research community. This is particularly encouraged for “experimentation and deployment papers”.
Submission Guidelines
The Middleware 2012 proceedings will be published in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). Papers should not exceed 20 pages in length, including the abstract, all figures, tables, and references. Papers should include a short abstract and up to six keywords. Submitted papers should adhere to the formatting instructions of the Springer LNCS Style.
Awards
At its discretion, the Program Committee may decide to award a Best Student Paper Award and a Best Paper Award to outstanding research contributions. If the primary author of a paper is a student, please identify this in the submission process.
Questions
For any questions about the relevance of a topic for a submission, please contact the Program Chairs at middleware2012-pcchairs-AT-lists.andrew.cmu.edu.
Important Dates
The cut-off time will be 23:59 in the last timezone in the globe (UTC - 12).
May 18, 2012 ? Abstract Submission (HARD DEADLINE)
May 25, 2012 ? Paper Submission (HARD DEADLINE)
August 10, 2012 ? Notification of Acceptance
31 August, 2012 ? Camera-ready paper due
There will be a separate call for industry papers, workshops, tutorials, and the Doctoral Symposium. Please check the website for dates.