Service-Oriented Programming (SOP) is quickly changing our vision of
software development, bringing a paradigmatic shift in the methodologies followed
by programmers when designing and implementing distributed systems.
SOP originally triggered a radical transformation of the Web, from being a means of
presenting information to a wide spectrum of people to becoming a computational fabric.
In such fabric, loosely-coupled services publish their interfaces and, through them,
discover and interact with each other abstracting from their internal implementations.
While this transformation still continues today, it has also already generated other shifts
in how programmers deal with resource handling (Cloud Computing) and the scalability of
software architectures from the very small to the very large (Microservices).
Research on SOP is giving strong impetus to the
development of new technologies and tools for creating and deploying
distributed software. In the context of this modern paradigm we have
to cope with an old challenge, like in the early days of
Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) when consistency in the programming model
definition was not achieved until the definition of key features like
encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism, together with proper design
methodologies. The complex scenario of SOP needs to be
clarified on many aspects, both from the engineering and from the
foundational points of view.
From the engineering point of view, there are open issues at many levels.
Among others, at the system design level, both traditional
approaches based on UML and approaches taking inspiration from
business process modelling, e.g. BPMN, are used. At the composition
level, orchestration and choreography are continuouslsy improved both formally and practically,
with an evident need for their integration in the development process.
At the description and discovery level there are two separate communities pushing respectively
the semantic approach (ontologies, OWL, ...) and the syntactic one like WSDL.
In particular, the role of discovery engines and protocols is not clear.
In this respect we still lack adopted standards: UDDI looked to be a
good candidate, but it is no longer pushed by the main corporations,
and its wide adoption seems difficult. Furthermore, a recent
implementation platform, the so-called REST services, is emerging and
competing with classic Web Services. Finally, features like Quality
of Service, security and dependability need to be taken seriously
into account, and this investigation should lead to standard
proposals.
From the foundational point of view, researchers have discussed widely
in the last years, and many attempts to use formal methods for
specification and verification in this setting have been made.
Session correlation, service types, contract theories and
communication patterns are only a few examples of the aspects that
have been investigated. Moreover, several formal models based upon
automata, Petri nets and algebraic approaches have been developed.
However, most of these approaches concentrate only on a few features
of Service-Oriented Systems in isolation, and a comprehensive approach
is still far from being achieved.
Our track aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners
having the common objective of transforming SOP into a mature
discipline with both solid scientific foundations and mature
software engineering development methodologies supported by dedicated
tools. In particular, we will encourage works and discussions about
what SOP still needs in order to achieve its original goal.
Major topics of interest will include:
- Formal methods for Service-Oriented Computing
- Notations, models, and standards for Service-Oriented Computing
- Tools and Middlewares for Service-Oriented Development
- Service-Oriented Programming Languages
- Service-Oriented Programming in dynamic Open Service Ecosystems
- Service Choreographies and Protocol-Driven Service Development
- Service Interfaces and Communication Technologies (e.g., REST)
- Microservices and Scalable Service-Oriented Computing
- Engineering methodologies and Patterns for Service-Oriented Software
- Static Analysis and Testing of Service-Oriented applications
- Adaptability, Dependability, and Fault handling in Service Systems
- Security in Service-Oriented Architectures
- Quality of Service and Performance Analysis
- Industrial deployment of tools and methodologies, case studies
- Service application case studies
- Trust and Services
- Sustainability and Services, Green Computing
- Cloud Computing and Services
- Services and Big Data
- IoT and Cloud-based Services
Submissions
Authors are invited to submit original unpublished papers. Submission
of the same paper to multiple tracks is not allowed. Peer groups with
expertise in the track focus area will double-blindly review submissions.
This means that authors must omit their names and institutions from the title page,
they should refer to their other work in the third person and omit acknowledgements that could reveal their identity or affiliation.
The purpose is to avoid any bias based on authors' identity characteristics, such as gender, seniority, or nationality,
in the review process.
Our goal is to facilitate an unbiased approach to reviewing by supporting reviewers' access
to works that do not carry obvious references to the authors' identities.
Anonymization should not be a heavy burden for authors, and should not make papers weaker or more difficult to review.
Advertising the paper on alternate forums
(e.g., on a personal web-page, pre-print archive, email, talks, discussions with colleagues)
is permitted, and authors will not be penalized by for such advertisement.
Papers not satisfying this constraint will be automatically rejected.
Accepted papers will be published in the annual
conference proceedings. SOAP track chairs will not submit to the
track. Submissions from SOAP PC members and from PC members and track
chairs of other SAC tracks are welcome. Submission guidelines
can be found on the
SAC 2018 website.
Prospective papers should be submitted to the track using the provided
automated submission system.
See the SAC site for the page constraints.
For each accepted paper, an author
or a proxy attending SAC MUST present the paper. This is a requirement
for the paper to be included in the ACM/IEEE digital library.
Paper registration is required, allowing the inclusion of the papers, posters, or SRC abstracts in the conference proceedings.
An author or a proxy attending SAC MUST present the paper. This is a requirement for the presented work to be included in the ACM/IEEE digital library.
No-show of registered papers, posters, and SRC abstracts will result in excluding them from the ACM/IEEE digital library.
Please submit your contribution via
SAC 2018 submission site.