KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

    -   Prof. Jeff Kramer, Chair of Distributed Computing, Imperial
        College London, and Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on
       Software Engineering.

    -   Dr. Xiaohan Liao, Director General for Information and
        Space Technology, Department of High and New Technology and
        Industrialization, Ministry of Science and Technology, China.
 
    -   Prof. Gregg Rothermel, Jensen Chair of Software Engineering,
        University of Nebraska at Lincoln, and Program Co-Chair of the
        29th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE
        2007).

KEYNOTE ADDRESSES

First Keynote: Distributed Software Engineering: a Rigorous Architectural Approach

Jeff Kramer
Department of Computing
Imperial College London
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~jk/

Abstract

The engineering of distributed software is a complex task which requires a 
rigorous approach. Software architectural (structural) concepts and 
principles are highly beneficial in specifying, designing, analysing, 
constructing and evolving distributed software. Structure, as a separable 
perspective, relies on sound techniques for composition - whether of 
software components or specifications of behaviour. These complementary 
concerns of structure and composition are the themes addressed here.

With hindsight, our work can be roughly divided into three overlapping 
phases. First, explicit structure characterised our work on configuration 
programming. The prototype distributed system CONIC included the ability to 
specify, construct and dynamically evolve a distributed software system, 
using a configuration language to compose software components. Work on the 
general purpose ADL Darwin and its industrial instantiation, Koala, 
followed. The second phase focused on modelling in a structural framework. 
The aim was to analyse systems as structural compositions of their 
components' behaviour. This led to our work with labelled transition 
systems (LTS), the process algebra, FSP (Finite State Processes) and 
construction of the model checker, LTSA. Model animation and model 
synthesis from scenarios has enriched this vein of research. Our current 
work is concerned with implicit structural specifications. The aim is to 
generate and check structures which satisfy constraints that can be imposed 
both statically and dynamically. We believe that this is needed in 
realising self-organising systems which both automatically configure 
themselves and subsequently reconfigure themselves to accommodate 
dynamically changing context and requirements without human intervention.

A rigorous architectural discipline dictates formalisms and techniques that 
are compositional, components that are context independent and systems that 
can be constructed and evolved incrementally. The talk overviews our 
experience with, and gives indications of our future work in, using 
architectural structure to engineer distributed software. We emphasise the 
role of software tools and prototype systems in doing Software Engineering 
research.

About the speaker

Professor Jeff Kramer is Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Head of 
Distributed Software Engineering in the Department of Computing at Imperial 
College London. He was Head of Department from 1999 to 2004. He was a principal 
investigator in the various research projects which led to the development 
of the CONIC environment for configuration programming and the Darwin 
architectural description language which is used in commercialised form by 
Philips for the software for high end television sets. His current research 
work is on behaviour analysis,the use of models in requirements elaboration 
and architectural approaches to self-organising software systems.

Jeff Kramer is a Chartered Engineer, Fellow of the IEE and Fellow of the 
ACM. He was program co-chair of the 21st ICSE (International Conference on 
Software Engineering) in Los Angeles in 1999, Chair of the Steering 
Committee for ICSE from 2000 to 2002, associate editor and member of the 
editorial board of ACM TOSEM from 1995 to 2001 and is currently 
editor-in-Chief of the editorial board of IEEE TSE. He was awarded the IEE 
Informatics Premium prize for 1998/99 for a paper on Software Architecture, 
was winner of the Most Influential Paper Award at ICSE 2003, and was 
awarded the 2005 ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award  for significant 
and lasting research contributions to Software Engineering. He is co-author 
of a recent book on Concurrency, co-author of a previous book on 
Distributed Systems and Computer Networks, and the author of over 150 
journal and conference publications.

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Second Keynote:

Xiaohan Liao
Department of High and New Technology and Industrialization
Ministry of Science and Technology

Abstract

In China, new organizational management has been structured in the R&D
programs to support domestic software development during the new 11th
national five-year plan.
 
A key national program is being launched jointly by a number of government
agencies headed by the Ministry of Science and Technology. Areas include
key electronic components, chipsets and infrastructure software.
 
Objectives associated with the infrastructure software cover supports for
the development and domestic replacement of essential software, such as
Operating System, Database Management System, Middleware and Office software.
Another important one is the 863 high technology program. It set priorities
in advanced computing technology, intelligence technology, network, virtual
reality, information security, and so on.

Industrialization aims at establishment of national and regional software parks
and incubators, as well as chip design bases in various areas.

Intellectual Property Rights are important goals in the software development.
Strategy is given to selectively obtain critical technologies, which can be used
for technology-technology exchange.

Emphases are given to encourage open source software and open source community
activities.

About the speaker

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Third Keynote: Keynote: Helping End-User Programmers "Engineer" Dependable Software

Gregg Rothermel
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University of Nebraska at Lincoln
http://www.cse.unl.edu/~grother

Abstract

Not long ago, most software was written by professional programmers, who
could be presumed to have an interest in software engineering methodologies
and in tools and techniques for improving software dependability.  Today, 
however, a great deal of software is written not by professionals but by 
end-users, who create applications such as multimedia simulations, dynamic 
web pages, and spreadsheets.  Applications such as these are often used to 
guide important decisions or aid in important tasks, and it is important that 
they be sufficiently dependable, but evidence shows that they frequently
are not.   For example, studies have shown that a large percentage of the
spreadsheets created by end-users contain faults, and stories abound of
spreadsheet faults that have led to multi-million dollar losses.  Despite
such evidence, until recently, relatively little research had been done to
help end-users create more dependable software.

In this talk, I'll show that it's possible to address this problem by
adapting formal software engineering techniques to the realm of end-user
programming.  Focusing on work done in the spreadsheet application paradigm,
I present several of approaches to using program analysis techniques to help
end-users build more dependable spreadsheets.  Behind the scenes, these
methodologies use static analyses such as dataflow analysis and slicing,
together with dynamic analyses such as execution monitoring, to support
user tasks such as validation and fault localization.  I show how, to
accommodate the user base of spreadsheet languages, an interface to these
methodologies can be provided that does not require users to understand
the theory behind the analyses, yet supports the interactive, incremental
process by which spreadsheets are created.  I present empirical results
gathered in the use of these methodologies, that highlight several costs
and benefits tradeoffs.

About the speaker

Gregg Rothermel's research interests include software engineering
and program analysis, with emphases on the application of program
analysis techniques to problems in software maintenance and testing,
end-user software engineering, and empirical studies.

Dr. Rothermel is a Program Co-Chair for the 2007 International
Conference on Software Engineering, and a member of the Editorial Boards
of the Empirical Software Engineering Journal and Software Quality Journal.
Previous positions include Associate Editor in Chief for IEEE Transactions
on Software Engineering, Program Chair for the 2004 ACM International
Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis, and Chair of the Steering
Committee for the International Conference on Software Maintenance.  He has
served on the program committees for numerous software engineering conferences
including the IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering, the ACM
International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering, and the ACM
International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis.

Dr. Rothermel received a B.A. in Philosophy from Reed College, an M.S.
in Computer Science from SUNY Albany, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from
Clemson University.  Prior to returning to academia, Dr. Rothermel was
employed as a software engineer, and as Vice President, Quality Assurance
and Quality Control for Palette Systems, Inc., a manufacturer of CAD/CAM
software. Since 2004, he has been a Professor and Jensen Chair of Software
Engineering in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at University
of Nebraska - Lincoln, where he is a founding member of the Laboratory
for Empirically-based Software Quality Research and Development (ESQuaReD).

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