QA4SASO 2015 - Second Edition of the Workshop on Quality Assurance for Self-adaptive, Self-organising Systems

Developing self-adaptive, self-organising systems (SASO) that fulfil the requirements of different stakeholders is no simple matter. Quality assurance is required at each phase of the entire development process, starting from requirements elicitation, system architecture design, agent design, and finally in the implementation of the system. The quality of the artefacts from each development phase affects the rest of the system, since all parts are closely related to each other. Furthermore, the shift of adaption decisions from design-time to run-time - necessitated by the need of the systems to adapt to changing circumstances - makes it difficult, but even more essential, to assure high quality standards in these kind of systems. Accordingly, the analysis and evaluation of these self-* systems has to take into account the specific operational context to achieve high quality standards.
The necessity to investigate this field has already been recognised and addressed in different communities but there exists so far no platform to bring all these communities together. Therefore, the workshop will provide an open stage for discussions about the different aspects of quality assurance for self-adaptive, self-organising systems. Examples for topics of interest are:
Modelling and verification
formal models and modelling languages such as automata, state machines, process algebras, logics, HOL, Markov-chains, UML
run-time verification and validation in SASO systems empirical evaluation
empirical evaluation
measurement and evaluation of resilience, security, performance, reliability, and cost in SASO systems
benchmarking of SASO systems
test-centred development
test derivation, test selection, test coverage, test implementation and execution, test result analysis, test oracles, test management, and monitoring
automated support of any of the testing activities, rigid testing processes, test driven development
case studies, industrial applications, and experience reports
Aim of the Workshop
The workshop aims to bring together researchers of different communities such as Multi-Agent Systems, Autonomic Computing, Organic Computing, Cyber-Physical Systems, Distributed Systems, Runtime Verification, Software Engineering, Software Testing and Software Quality Assurance to discuss - based on research papers, new ideas, and work in progress reports - the different aspects of quality assurance for self-adaptive, self-organising systems in order to provide highly reliable, resilient systems. The workshop is an opportunity to promote different views on this key challenge in self-organising, adaptive systems and to engage in discussions about paradigm shifts in software quality assurance in order to cope the flexibility of the system design of self-organising, adaptive systems, as well as presenting ongoing research and identify areas where more attention from the community is required.
Audience
The workshop is aimed at researchers and practitioners that have been investigating quality assurance in self-organising, adaptive systems. We explicitly encourage participation of researchers from different communities within computer science. The workshop will be set in an informal and cooperative atmosphere with ample time allotted to discussions.
Call for Papers
The organisers welcome the submission of papers not exceeding 6 pages in the IEEE Computer Society Press proceedings style. We solicit original research papers, position papers, as well as experience reports. Papers need to be previously unpublished and currently not under review elsewhere.
The proceedings of the workshop will be published by IEEE Computer Society Press. Content will be submitted to the indexing companies for possible indexing. Indexing services are independent organisations, and we cannot guarantee that any particular abstract or index entry will be included in Ei Compendex or any other indexing service.
Call for Talks
The organisers welcome the submission of proposals for talks in the IEEE Computer Society Press proceedings style not exceeding two pages. We encourage the submission of talks presenting previously published work that is of special interest to the community of the workshop. Moreover, position statements encouraging discussions on the workshop's topics are welcome. The workshop is an excellent opportunity to discuss and share research results with a wider audience in an interdisciplinary environment.
Each submission will be peer-reviewed by two to three members of the program committee in a single-blind process. The decision will be based on the motivation of the research, the clarity of the claims of the contribution and the relevance of the research to the topics listed above. In particular, submissions that promise to fuel discussions, which bring together results and issues from different disciplines and which thus contribute to the strengthening of an interdisciplinary community will be given preference.