Workshop on
Composability Issues
in Object-Orientation
Composability Issues
in Object-Orientation
WS10
Tuesday, July 9, 1996
Composability Issues in Object-Orientation | |
Recently, the area of composability in object-orientation gains
more interest, as it becomes more apparent that the 'conventional'
object model does not sufficiently provide support for object
composition.
Composability is the ability to put together a piece of software
from several components. This is an essential property for building
large and complex systems as it enables modularization and separation
of concerns. Well-known techniques for composability are inheritance,
delegation and part-of relations, which compose behavior, data
structures and/or states to define new objects.
One of the issues in composability is that components (objects)
are a combination (composition) of specifications for several
independent aspects and concerns. Examples are behavior, data
structure, data values, synchronization, constraints, etc. On
one hand these specifications must be composed into a consistent
object specification, on the other hand, when composing a system
from existing objects, we may be interested only in particular
aspects from these objects.
In addition, the composition semantics may be different for each
aspect. As a result, it is in practice often very difficult or
impossible to achieve a particular composition. For example, inheritance
is a mechanism for composing new objects from one or more existing
specifications. Conventional inheritance defines semantics for
composing behavior and data structure, respectively from the inherited
and newly defined methods, and from inherited and newly defined
instance variables. Obviously, this is insufficient if application
objects involve more than these two aspects.
The goal of this workshop is to define the research area and the
state of the art in composability of objects, and to come up with
a list of open problems. As an indication, we mention some relevant
topics:
The preliminary Workshop Agenda is available now.
The received topics will be collected and a selection will be
made by the organizers and participants through e-mail discussions.
Based on the received position papers and the selected topics
a few speakers will be invited, based on their coverage of these
topics.
Component-oriented programming considers the full breadth of component-
oriented technology, including aspects and interaction of packaging and
distribution, higher-level information hiding, dynamic composition. The
workshop on COP will also consider components in the context of document-
oriented systems, such as OpenDoc and OLE 2.
Adaptability can be defined at various levels e.g. analysis and design
level, program level, or
compilation and link-time level. Several research activities have paid
attention to reusability
and adaptability. There are however still a number of open research issues
in designing adaptable software systems which need to be solved.
This workshop will concentrate on the problems of adaptability models and
techniques and will
explore new generic mechanisms to enhance the adaptability at various
abstraction
levels.
workshop report
book publication
organizers
participants
contact-info
CFP
planning
attendance
papers
related workshops
links
Organizers
Lodewijk Bergmans
(University of Twente / STEX bv, The Netherlands)
Pierre Cointe
(Ecoles des Mines Nantes, France)
Information about all participants, their position papers and proposed
workshop topics is collected here.
The participants
You can contact the organizers through e-mail at the following address:
CIOO96@cs.utwente.nl (
mail now). More elaborate contact
information can be found at the end of this page.
Contact-Information
Call for Participation
During the workshop, after (brief) presentations and general discussion,
we intend to split in small groups that focus on topics that the
participants have indicated before, we finish with conclusions
from these groups. The goal thus is to have an (inter)active workshop
instead of just a series of presentations!
Workshop Planning
Participants should submit a short (3-6 pages) position paper.
The position paper should preferably propose one or more open
problems in composability by providing a clear motivation. The
position paper should also include, or be accompanied by, a list
of topics to be addressed during the workshop. Submissions in
electronic format (Postscript or plain ASCII text), sent by email
(now!)
to cioo96@cs.utwente.nl are strongly encouraged. Position papers
should be received by May, 31, 1996. Notification of
acceptance will be by June 20th, 1996 (Note that we
extended the deadline).
Attendance
The position papers are
available here. They are all
in postscript format. They should be readable and printable by everyone.
The position papers
The ECOOP '96 Workshop chair, Max Mülhäuser, has arranged the possibility
of publishing ca. 60 pages for this workshop in a shared volume with
proceedings from most other ECOOP workshops. These will be published in
the following book:
Book Publication
Special Issues in Object-Oriented Programming
More information about the contents of the book chapter that is dedicated to
the composability workshop can be found in the
Introduction.
Max Muehlhaeuser (general editor) et al.
dpunkt Heidelberg, 1997
Related Workshops
Workshop On Component-Oriented Programming:
The workshop on Composability Issues in Object-Orientation and the ECOOP '96
workshop on component-oriented programming have some overlap.
Composability of objects focusses on the one specific issue of
composition of objects, the conditions for sane composition, types of
composition, etc, with a particular interest in the demands and
characteristics of object models that truly support composition.
Adaptability in
Object-Oriented Software Development Workshop
Large and complex software systems have to cope with a steady change of
various requirements. The reasons for this are twofold. First, complex systems
are very hard to understand and therefore the initial requirements of these
systems suffer from errors. Second, complex systems tend to evolve after they
have been developed and consequently the requirements change accordingly.
In order to cope with these problems the demand has risen for adaptable
software which can be adjusted to the changing requirements or correct the
errors in the initial requirements engineering.
Pointers of Interest
General Home Page
Related
workshops at ECOOP '96:
Workshop on Component-Oriented Programming (WOCOP-96)
Adaptability in
Object-Oriented Software Development Workshop
TRESE home page
'Systemes et
Languages a Objets' (french only)
Organizers:
STEX bv (Software Technology EXpertise)
D. Dijkhuisstraat 248 * NL-7558 GG *
Hengelo (Ov.) *
The Netherlands
University of Twente * Computer Science * Group SETI * Project
TRESE
Phone: +31-74-2777122 * Fax: +31-74-2775576
E-mail: stex@cs.utwente.nl
(mail now)
P.O. Box 217 * NL-7500 AE * Enschede * The Netherlands
Phone: +31-53-4894649 * Fax: +31-53-4893503 * Secr: +31-53-4893740
E-mail: bergmans@cs.utwente.nl
Laboratoire Jules Verne,
Ecole des Mines de Nantes & Object Technology International
Inc.
La Chantrerie, 4 rue Alfred Kastler, 44070 Nantes Cedex 03, France
Voice: +33-51-85-82-00 / Fax: +33-51-85-82-49
E-mail: Pierre.Cointe@emn.fr
This page is (hopefully) maintained by Lodewijk Bergmans