RALS3 - 1st Workshop on Robust and Adaptive Large Scale Software Systems

Motivation and Objectives

Large-Scale Software systems are the backbones of today’s society. The sheer scale and the resulting dynamics renders manual control of those systems infeasible. Instead, they need to automatically adapt to changes, both from within the system itself as well as its environment. In particular, those systems face a high variability regarding users/things, workloads, or resources. To fulfill given functional and quality requirements even during adaptation, these systems require a certain robustness in respect to change. This workshop aims at exploring challenges and techniques to tackle this interplay of adaption and robustness across the complete system stack.

As a key challenge, it is not possible to completely switch off these systems when performing changes. Hence, all adaptations need to be performed online while the system continuously provides its service in the agreed quality or even more severe, in the face of safety-critical operation scenarios. While robustness constitutes an aspect typically addressed in safety-critical systems with a focus on reliability, availability, or security threats, the outlined constant changes in large-scale software systems create a smorgasbord of new robustness challenges. Further complicating is that these systems are not built by a single vendor, instead, they form complex ecosystems where functionality is provided by different components from different ecosystem partners in complex and unplanned, ad-hoc structures. The service and quality provided by these systems is consequently an emergent property of the ecosystem that can neither be achieved nor easily enforced centrally.

Reaching the goal of robust and adaptive large-scale software systems is a holistic endeavor that cannot be addressed by research solely in a single area of computer science. Instead, it requires coordination and cross-area solutions of multiple areas of Computer Science. Consequently, this workshop focuses on bringing the research communities of all required subareas together to exchange experiences, ideas, and future solutions to achieve robust and adaptive large-scale software systems.

Concept and Schedule

The workshop schedule focuses on a significant amount of discussion. Each session consists of three talks of 20 minutes each with 2 minutes for clarification questions. The talk presenters will form a panel moderated by the session chair for the final 24 minutes of a session which is used for deeper questions from the audience as well as discussions on challenges and research directions.

The final session will be devoted to group work where the participants will discuss a taxonomy of challenges for robust and adaptive large-scale software systems as well as research directions.

Participants of the workshop are invited to co-author a resulting publication summarizing the outcome of the workshop with respect to the identified challenges, potential directions for solutions, and existing approaches.

Submission Information

Submission are published as part of the workshop proceedings via CEUR-WS. Authors are invited to submit research papers (up to 14 pages), position papers (up to 8 pages), or abstracts (2 pages) in LNCS format (Template). Research papers should present original and evaluated research whereas position papers describe novel ideas, identified challenges, or experiences related to the workshop’s main topic. The 2-page abstracts describe state of practice and challenges, particularly covering but not limited to industrial practitioners.

Each paper will undergo a blind review process by the programme committee members. Papers are to submitted via Easychair. The submission deadline is 15th of May 2020 (! Extension 31st of May 2020 !). Notification of acceptance is scheduled for the 15th of June and accepted papers should be submitted camera-ready until late August (exact deadline will be announced soon).

Organizers

• Michael Glaß, Ulm University
• Franz J. Hauck, Ulm University
• Manfred Reichert, Ulm University
• Matthias Tichy, Ulm University

Programme Committee

• Lars Grunske, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
• Rüdiger Kapitza, Technische Universität Braunschweig
• Sandro Schulz, Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg
• Fedor Smirnov, Leopold-Franzens Universität Innsbruck
• Sebastian Steinhorst, Technical University of Munich