OOPSLA '05 workshop on Reliability

OOPSLA '05 Workshop: Fostering Software Reliability in an Increasingly Hostile World

Workshop date: Sunday, October 16, 2005
Location: OOPSLA '05 Conference in San Diego, California

Website Contents

Workshop Overview

Reliability and Availability are important characteristics of good quality software systems:

often ignored in the requirements collection and analysis process
not always sufficiently visible in the design and coding
frequently overlooked in testing and deployment
*but* -- reliablity problems are often the source of customer dissatisfaction, complaints, loss of business, and sometimes direct damage to systems

This workshop will discuss a number of important questions relating to software reliability:

What technologies can help make our software more reliable? Will object oriented and component-based techniques help?
Which methods work? What are the costs and benefits?
What are the risks of doing nothing?
Are there combinations of techniques that make it easier to achieve “commercial transaction system” or “carrier-grade” levels of reliability?

Are you interested in joining the dialog on software reliability? Here is how you can join the workshop:

Contact one of the workshop organizers listed below.
Prepare a one-page "position paper" -- containing your ideas, questions, and experiences. Send your position paper to mancl - AT - lucent.com. Position papers are due by August 25, 2005.

The position papers will be used as a starting point for planning the workshop's activities.

Your position paper might explain some of your personal experiences with reliability issues.

Or, you might also describe some specific techniques you have tried to improve reliability (especially if they are related to OO technology).
Or, your position paper might present criteria for selecting reliability techniques to use for different kinds of problems.

Note: If you are coming from outside the US, and you need more time to obtain a visa, please let us know. We can arrange to make a decision on your position paper early.

You will receive notification of your acceptance into the workshop by September 5.

One good place to start for ideas about reliability is Greg Utas's website: http://www.pentennea.com. Follow the "Book" link to read several chapters of Greg's book on design issues for high-reliability software.

The workshop will be organized as a set of interactive brainstorming and discussion sessions. The workshop participants will prepare a poster to be presented at the OOPSLA poster session on Monday afternoon.

The workshop is limited to at most 20 participants, so please send email to one of the committee members early if you are interested.

Tentative agenda

8:30-9:30 -- short presentations of the position statements of the workshop participants; setting the agenda for the day
9:30-10:00 -- brainstorming session: to create a list of the most important reliability topics
10:00-4:00 -- at least 3 iterative working sessions: based on the material prioritized in the brainstorming session
[working lunch will take place somewhere in this interval]
4:00-5:00 -- wrap up: creation of a poster for the OOPSLA poster session

More resources for the workshop:

Initial workshop proposal (MS-Word format)
list of references

Workshop committee:

Dennis Mancl (mancl - AT - lucent.com)
Amir Zeid (amirzeid - AT - aucegypt.edu)
Greg Utas (greg - AT - pentennea.com)
Steve Fraser (sdfraser - AT - acm.org)

For more information on the OOPSLA conference, see http://oopsla.acm.org.

If you are interested in more information, contact Dennis Mancl (at Lucent Technologies -- email address is "my last name"@"company name").

Position Papers

The following links are the "position papers" that were written by some of the workshop participants: