SLE2013 - 6th International Conference on Software Language Engineering

Call for Papers

The 6th International Conference on Software Language Engineering (SLE) is devoted to topics related to artificial languages in software engineering. SLE’s mission is to encourage and organize communication among communities that have traditionally looked at software languages from different and yet complementary perspectives. Of particular relevance to SLE are technologies, methods, experiments, and case studies on software languages from researchers and practitioners who use modeling, grammar, or ontology-based approaches. Research that bridges, connects and integrates such approaches is particularly welcome.

Scope

The term “software language” refers to artificial languages used in software development. These include general-purpose programming languages, domain-specific languages, modeling and metamodeling languages, data models and ontologies. Examples include general purpose modeling languages such as SysML and UML, metamodeling frameworks such as Ecore, MOF or GOPRR, domain-specific modeling languages for business process modeling, such as BPMN, or embedded systems, such as Simulink or Modelica, and specialized XML-based and OWL-based languages and vocabularies. The term “software language” is intentionally broad; besides the above categories and examples, it also encompasses implicit approaches to language definition, such as APIs and collections of design patterns.

Software language engineering is the application of systematic, disciplined, and measurable approaches to the development (design, implementation, testing, deployment), use, deployment, and maintenance (evolution, recovery, and retirement) of these languages. Of special interest are (1) formal descriptions of languages that are used to design or generate language-based tools and (2) methods and tools for managing such descriptions, including modularization, refactoring, refinement, composition, versioning, co-evolution, recovery, and analysis.

Topics of Interest

We solicit high-quality contributions in the area of SLE ranging from theoretical and conceptual contributions to tools, techniques, and frameworks that support the aforementioned lifecycle activities. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following:

Formalisms used in designing and specifying languages, and tools that analyze language descriptions
Language implementation techniques: compiler generator tools, attribute grammar systems, term-rewriting systems, functional programming-based combinator libraries; metamodel-based and ontology tools implementing constraint, rule, view, transformation, and query formalisms and engines.
Transformations and transformation languages, as well as program and model transformation tools, and approaches for mapping between ontologies.
Language evolution: Included are extensible languages and type systems and their supporting tools and language conversion tools, approaches for ontology evolution, approaches for impact analysis of language evolution.
Approaches to the elicitation, specification, and verification of requirements for software languages: Examples include the use of requirements engineering techniques in domain engineering and in the development of domain-specific languages and the application of logic-based formalisms for verifying language and domain requirements.
Language development frameworks, methodologies, techniques, best practices, and tools for the broader language lifecycle covering phases such as analysis, testing, and documentation. For example, frameworks for advanced type or reasoning systems, constraint mechanisms, tools for metrics collection and language usage analysis, assessing language usability, documentation generators, visualization backends, generation of tests for language-based tools, knowledge and process management approaches, as well as IDE support for many of these activities are of interest.
Integration and interoperation between different approaches to software language engineering; for example, ways to integrate grammar-based and ontology-based approaches to language definition.
Design challenges in SLE: Example challenges include finding a balance between specificity and generality in designing domain-specific languages, between strong static typing and weaker yet more flexible type systems, or between deep and shallow embedding approaches, as, for example, in the context of adding type-safe XML and database programming support to general-purpose programming languages.
Applications of languages including innovative domain-specific languages or “little” languages: Examples include policy languages for security or service-oriented architectures, web-engineering with schema-based generators or ontology-based annotations. Of specific interest are the engineering aspects of domain-specific language support in all of these cases.

The program committee chairs encourage potential contributors to contact them with questions about the scope and topics of interest of SLE. The overall principle of SLE is to be broad-minded and inclusive about relevance and scope, and to invest in community building when soliciting and selecting papers.

Types of Submissions

We solicit the following types of papers:

Research papers: These should report a substantial research contribution to SLE or successful application of SLE techniques or both. Full paper submissions must not exceed 20 pages (in LNCS format).
Industrial experience papers: These papers discuss practical applications of SLE technology with an emphasis on the advantages and disadvantages of the method, techniques, or tools used. These papers must not exceed 10 pages (in LNCS format).
Tool demonstration papers: Because of SLE’s ample interest in tools, we seek papers that present software tools related to the field of SLE. These papers will accompany a tool demonstration to be given at the conference. These papers must not exceed 10 pages (in LNCS format). The selection criteria include the originality of the tool, its innovative aspects, the relevance of the tool to SLE, and the maturity of the tool.

Papers are submitted via the Easychair system: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sle2013

Papers should follow the LNCS format: http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0

Deadline for abstracts: June 7, 2013 (Midnight UTC-8, Pacific Standard Time)
Deadline for full papers: June 14, 2013 (Midnight UTC-8, Pacific Standard Time)

Submitted articles must not have been previously published or currently be submitted for publication elsewhere. The program chairs will apply the principles of the ACM Plagiarism Policy throughout the submission and review process.

Proceedings

All submitted papers will be reviewed by at least three members of the program committee. All accepted papers will be published in Springer’s Lecture Notes in Computer Science series (http://www.springer.com/lncs). All papers must be formatted according to the Springer’s Lecture Notes in Computer Science style.