---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: Reminder: The tenth OOPSLA workshop on behavioral semantics: Back to Basics Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2001 13:36:42 EDT From: Haim Kilov HaimK@AOL.COM To: ISWORLD@LISTSERV.HEANET.IE

Back to Basics

The Tenth OOPSLA workshop on behavioral semantics (Tampa, FL, October 15, 2001)

The continuing theme of the Workshop Series on Behavioral Semantics is to foster precise and explicit specifications of business and system semantics. The need to understand and specify semantics in this way, independently of any (possible) realization, has been recognized for a while. Some progress has been made in these areas, both in academia and in industry. However, in too many cases only lip service to these ideas has been provided, and as a result the systems we build or buy are all too often not what they are supposed to be.

We used to live with that, and quite often users relied on human intermediaries to "sort the things out." However, with the rapid development of e-commerce and agent-based systems, there is no human intermediary; if the system is not what it is supposed to be then its user will quickly go to a competitor.

This series has successfully brought together practitioners and theoreticians who have been working to make this vision a reality. This year, the series will be celebrating its tenth anniversary by revisiting the classics of the past while also looking to the future of the field. We refer to this as "Back to Basics."

One of the unfortunate characteristics of Computer Science and Software Engineering is a noteworthy lack of interest in work done in the past. It is taken for granted that a two-year old book could not possibly still be relevant. Yet books such as the Garmisch 1968 Conference on Software Engineering show that many of the concepts considered now to be a recent invention, have existed for a long time. This includes such concepts as pair programming, component factories, the gross inadequacies of box-and-line diagrams, the confusion generated by a set of tacit assumptions, the reuse of architectural ideas of Christopher Alexander, among many others. Systematic usage of the basic ideas from this book, as well as many other classics, would prevent the enormous waste of effort resulting from reinventing these ideas.

As in all the workshops in this series, it is our goal to be a focal point of bringing together theoreticians and practitioners to report their experience with making semantics precise, clear, concise and explicit in (OO) business specifications, business designs, and system specifications. We invite papers varying from academic research (especially dealing with transferring theory into practice) to industrial "war stories." This year there is an emphasis on revisiting the classics both to "set the record straight" and to recapture insights and ideas that might otherwise slip into oblivion.

Submitted papers (5-10 pages) will be reviewed by the organizers. The accepted papers, after rework by the authors, will be published, again as usual, in the Workshop Proceedings. These Proceedings will be distributed before the workshop.

Please send submissions before September 1, 2001, to Haim Kilov haimk@acm.org

Organizers: Haim KIlov, Kenneth Baclawski.

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