The importance of "systems infrastructure" software -- including application servers, virtual machines, middleware, compilers, and operating systems -- is increasing as application programmers demand better and higher-level support for software development. Vendors that provide superior support for application development have a competitive advantage. The software industry as a whole benefits as the base level of abstraction increases, thus decreasing the need for application programmers to continually "reinvent the wheel."

These trends, however, mean that the demands on infrastructure software are increasing. More and more features and requirements are being "pushed down" into the infrastructure, and the developers of systems software need better tools and techniques for handling these increased demands. In particular, developers need better techniques for modularizing, combining, and analyzing the many features that are now being demanded from infrastructure software.

This meeting of the ACP4IS workshop will focus on the particular topic of extra-functional features and their interactions. Extra-functional features (sometimes called non-functional features) include features such as dependability, performance, footprint, testability, etc. Aspects, components, and patterns are currently not widely used to implement extra-functional features in infrastructure software. The goal of this year's workshop is to better understand why this is the case and how these techniques relate, individually and in combination, to the inherent challenges of extra-functional feature interactions in systems infrastructure. Critical issues include dependability of infrastructure software; the integrity, availability and reliability of the provided infrastructure; configurability of systems infrastructure; testability; maintainability; and susceptibility to repair and enhancement over time. Suggested topics for position papers include, but are not restricted to approaches that use, combine, or relate aspects, components, and patterns-based techniques for:

• Supporting extra-functional features of infrastructure software
• Enforcing and guaranteeing extra-functional features
• Composition of extra-functional features
• Dealing with emergent extra-functional features
• Dealing with conflicting extra-functional requirements
• Resolving extra-functional features interactions
• Configurability of extra-functional features in infrastructure software
• Specific infrastructure domains
• Fault monitoring, prevention, and tolerance
• Dependability estimation
• Quantitative and qualitative evaluations

The workshop will be structured to encourage fruitful discussions and build connections between workshop participants. To this end, approximately half of the workshop time will be devoted to short presentations of accepted papers, with the remaining half devoted to semi-structured discussion groups. Participants will be expected to have read the accepted papers prior to the workshop, to help ensure focused discussions. Participants will work with the workshop organizers prior to the workshop to establish topics for discussion groups.

Submission Guidelines

Invitation to the workshop will be based on accepted position papers, 2-4 pages in length. All papers must be submitted electronically in ACM style and either PDF, Postscript, or MS Word format. Papers should be submitted via the workshop's Web site. Paper submissions will be reviewed by the workshop program committee and designated reviewers. Papers will be evaluated based on technical quality, originality, relevance, and presentation.

All accepted papers will be posted at the workshop Web site prior to the workshop date, to give all participants the opportunity to read them before the workshop. In addition, the accepted papers will be published in a Workshop Proceedings as a technical report.

Electronic Submission

Special Issue of IEE Software

Important Dates Submission Deadline is: January 22, 2006 (closed) Notification of Acceptance is: February 10, 2006 Camera-Ready Copy (CRC) Due: February 24, 2006 Workshop: March 21, 2006