ERCIM Workshop on Software Evolution

by Tom Mens, Maja D'Hondt and Laurence Duchien

The ERCIM Working Group on Software Evolution organised its annual two-day workshop 6-7 April 2006 at Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille (USTL) in France. The workshop reported on the theoretical, practical and empirical research on software evolution carried out by the working group members, and discussd new opportunities for collaboration.

The workshop gathered 40 researchers from ten European countries. In total, 25 position papers were submitted to the workshop, all of which were peer-reviewed by an international programme committee consisting of 17 well-known researchers. The best submissions were selected for inclusion in a special issue of Elsevier's Electronical Notes in Theoretical Computer Science. Eleven submissions were invited for a long presentation and six for short presentation. These workshop presentations covered a wide variety of research topics. Among others, the following topics were addressed, with the aim to provide either better formal support or better tool support: model-driven software evolution, aspect-oriented software evolution, component-based software evolution, architectural evolution, runtime software evolution, empirical analysis, software restructuring, and software quality measurement.

Arie Van Deursen, Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, gave an invited talk on 'The Software Evolution Paradox: An Aspect Mining Perspective'. During this talk, he explored the relation between software evolution and the exciting research domain of aspect-oriented software development.

In addition to the scientific purpose, the workshop also hosted the annual steering committee meeting of the ERCIM Working Group on Software Evolution. The committee discussed the current status of the network, which includes over 35 members from research institutes all over Europe, 17 of which belong to ten different ERCIM partner institutes and plans about future activities such as opportunities for proposing new initiatives within the IST domain of the EU 7th Framework Programme, in particular within the strategic objective "Adaptive Software Intensive Systems". It appears that the need for supporting software adaptation and software evolution is becoming increasingly important within this strategic objective.

Workshop participants.

The workshop was co-organised by Tom Mens (WG chair), Laurence Duchien and Maja D'Hondt (ERCIM postdoctoral fellow) who offered to host the workshop at the Laboratoire d'Informatique Fondamentale de Lille (LIFL) and INRIA Futurs in Lille, France.

Links:
Working Group website: http://w3.umh.ac.be/evol/
Workshop website: http://w3.umh.ac.be/evol/meetings/evol2006.html

Please contact:
Tom Mens, Institut d'Informatique, Université de Mons-Hainaut, Belgium
Tel: +32 65 37 3453
E-mail: tom.mensumh.ac.be