Subject: IEEE-CS TC-RTS Newsletter for Wed Jul 03, 1996 _______________________________________________________________________________ __ _ __ ___ ___ __ __ I E E E Technical Committee |\ | |_ | | (_' | |_ | | |_ |_) C S on Real-Time Systems | \| |__ |/\| ,_) |__ |__ | | |__ | \ _______________________________________________________________________________ Table of Contents Line ----------------- ---- 1. Azer Bestavros (530 lines) RTDB'96: Workshop Report........................................... 3 RTAS'96: Tutorial Notes available.................................. 512 2. wsinjh@win.tue.nl (j.hooman) (41 lines) Postdoc position available in Eindhoven University of Technology... 533 3. Thomas Rakow (50 lines) Postdoc Positions at GMD-IPSI...................................... 574 4. (55 lines) Post Doctoral Research Opportunity at University of Utah........... 623 5. tah@eecs.berkeley.edu (Tom Henzinger) (44 lines) CAV 96: Call for Participation..................................... 678 6. watson@dan.cs.usu.edu (Dan Watson) (43 lines) HCW '97: Call for Participation.................................... 723 7. Matz Kindahl (47 lines) FTRTFT '96: Program And Call For Registration...................... 766 8. Dominique Mery (82 lines) FME 97: Call for Submissions....................................... 812 9. Nandit Soparkar (105 lines) DART'96 Workshop: Call for Papers.................................. 895 10. Oded Maler (70 lines) HART'97, First Call for Papers..................................... 999 11. jorgen@ida.his.se (Jorgen Hansson) (66 lines) HART'97, First Call for Papers..................................... 1069 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<* START OF THE IEEE-CS TC-RTS NEWSLETTER *>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Message 1; Postmarked Wed Jul 3 00:01:17 1996 From: Azer Bestavros Subject: RTDB'96: Workshop Report Content-Length: 26837 -------------------------------------------------------------------- RTDB'96 First International Workshop on Real-Time Database Systems Workshop Report by Azer Bestavros Computer Science Department Boston University (best@cs.bu.edu) Kwei-Jay Lin Electrical & Computer Engineering Department University of California, Irvine (klin@uci.edu) Sang Son Computer Science Department University of Virginia (son@cs.virginia.edu) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Abstract -------- This report summarizes the technical presentations and discussions that took place during RTDB'96: the First International Workshop on Real-Time Databases, which was held on March 7 and 8, 1996 in Newport Beach, CA, USA. The main goals of this workshop were to (1) review recent advances in real-time database systems research, (2) to promote interaction among real-time database researchers and practitioners, and (3) to evaluate the maturity and directions of real-time database technology. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction ------------ On March 7 and 8, 1996, the First International Workshop on Real-Time Database Systems (RTDB'96) was held in Newport Beach, California. There were about 50 workshop participants from many countries, including Germany, Netherland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and USA. Twenty two papers were presented in the 2-day program and they were actively discussed in six different sessions. There were also two panel sessions, with four panelists each, to review and to suggest the technology needed for real-time database applications. One of the goals of RTDB'96 was to create a forum for recent advances in real-time databases---an area that is becoming more important as real-time computing is needed in our systems and environment. We hoped to, and indeed we did, bring together researchers and engineers from academia and industry to explore the best ideas in real-time database systems research, and to evaluate the maturity and directions of real-time database systems technology. The interaction among all participants in the workshop (such as discussing the advanced functionalities and timely management of data, arguing about the real-time requirements in practical systems, suggesting the new issues to be investigated in future projects, etc.) provided a very precious and fruitful experience for everyone. The sunny weather and the 80-plus-degree temperature had certainly made the workshop even more enjoyable, especially for people from the east coast where some 12 inches of snow fell in those two days! In RTDB'96, single track sessions were scheduled to give all participants the opportunity to have full interactions with all speakers and panelists, and to exchange opinions with other participants. The technical program covered a range of issues, such as temporal consistency, scheduling, models and benchmarks, concurrency control, and applications. In this report, we provide highlights of the papers presented in the workshop. Postscript files of the papers are available on the WWW from the URL below: http://www.eng.uci.edu/ece/rtdb/rtdb96.html -------------------------------------------------------------------- Session 1: Temporal Constraints and Issues --------- This session was to be chaired by Workshop Chair Jane Liu, but she was caught in an ice storm in Illinois and didn't arrive until the second day. So Program Co-Chair Kwei-Jay Lin chaired the session instead. The session was scheduled as the first session so that all workshop participants may have a common understanding/agreement on the temporal constraint aspects of RTDBS. The first paper was presented by Ming Xiong of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The paper discusses models of RTDB transactions and temporal consistency. Several approaches to maintain data temporal consistency were mentioned, including determining the periods for sensor transactions, data version selections, forcing user transactions to delay for a more up-to-date version, etc. The paper also suggested a particular technique for assigning deadlines to transactions based on the temporal constraints imposed on data. The second presentation was a position statement by Anindya Datta of the University of Arizona on issues involved in designing Active Rapidly Changing data Systems (ARCS). One of the messages from the paper is that using "good-old" OCC concurrency control techniques may be inadequate for active RT databases because "chaining" of transactions is not considered. It has also raised the issue of how updates from the environment (through sensors) should be scheduled against user transactions and other updates. The third paper was presented by Lei Zhou of the University of Michigan. The paper looks at a feedback control system, where data (e.g. sensor readings, derived data, state information) is shared amongst several processes. It introduces the concept of "completion probability" i.e. the probability that transactions may complete before deadlines. Also, it defines the notion of "interval constraints" for the interval when a transaction may be executed. The paper shows a number of simulation studies for various scheduling algorithms (RM, EDF, FIFO) and concludes that none of them is really much better than the others. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Session 2: Real-Time Database Applications --------- This session was chaired by John Stankovic, who "challenged" the RTDB community to make the case for RTDB technology by showing the "value-added" it brings to as many applications as possible. The session was also concluded by John who presented a list of application domains that came up and added his belief that there are many more. The first paper was presented by Oystein Torbjornsen of the Telenor R&D in Norway. It describes the architecture of a fault-tolerant RTDB system, called ClustRa, for telecommunication. A parallel database design on a shared nothing architecture is used to achieve scalable throughput. Two-safe replication synchronization over two sites is used to enhance availability. Moreover, techniques such as main memory resident data, main memory logging, and bounded transaction execution are used to provide real-time performance. The second paper was presented by Antoni Wolski from VTT Finland. The emphasis in this talk was the difference between "Engineering and Science". The authors argued that as an "engineering application" RTDB systems must provide the "best compromise" as opposed to the "most elegant" solution. The issues of cost consciousness are examined (e.g. the learning curve of new techniques and the man/machine interaction issues are important for systems that involve a "person in the loop"---this is emphasized throughout the paper as in section 3.5 where "user friendliness" is highlighted as a reason to modify their trigger definitions for composite events). One of the messages that came out of the discussion that followed the presentation of this paper was that sometimes deadlines are set based on what the system can do (in other words, if the system is built to be twice as fast, then laxities will be halfed). The paper itself discussed the performance constraints that guided the design of the RAPID system---a Client/Server fast-response and active history database. The third paper was presented by Anders Torne of Linkoping University, Sweden. The paper addresses the use of database "techniques" in process control simulations and systems. Instead of adding real-time functionality to a database management system, it tries to apply database technology selectively within the real-time system and to add some real-time functionality in the database. It discusses techniques used for indexing time-stamped data so that the speed of insertion and retrieval is improved. The fourth paper was presented by Holger Branding of Darmstadt, Germany. The paper identified a good application domain for RTDB technology, namely WWW applications. It argued for the "unbundling" of RTDBS technology to support WWW application. In particular, it suggested predictive prefetching and contingency plans as important functionalities to be added to the WWW. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Session 3: ``Are we looking at the right problems?'' --------- This was the first panel of the workshop. The title of the panel was "Are we looking at the right issues of RTDB?". The panel was monitored by Kwei-Jay Lin. The panelists were Doug Locke of Loral Federal Systems, Lui Sha of SEI/CMU, Krithi Ramamritham of the University of Massachusetts, and Brad Adelberg of Stanford University. Doug Locke first spoke of the application requirements for Aerospace RTDB systems. He emphasized that transactions that miss their deadlines "must" finish and argued for value-cognizant RTDB systems as opposed to the hard/firm deadline paradigm. Several workload requirements in the Air Traffic Control, Spacecraft Control, Training Simulation, etc. were presented and discussed. Lui Sha then talked about the need for an equivalent to the ACID properties for RTDB systems. He suggested that the notion of "stream data" is fundamental for RTDB. In other words, one may think of stream-data RTDB as different enough from traditional RTDB that deal with closed systems where changes to data are only carried by transactions from within the system. Brad Adelberg described the STRIP project at Stanford, which is aimed at financial applications (e.g. financial market monitoring). Much emphasis have been placed on the data update streams received by the database and how they can be effectively handled to provide a real-time view in the database. Krithi Ramamritham finally discussed the impact of RTDB technology in commercial products. He pointed out that while temporal and active database ideas have found their way into commerical products as well as into SQL, real-time database ideas have not. One plausible reason is that developing time-cognizant extensions to database protocols requires a fairly substantial overhaul. The second reason is that a large proportion of the techniques developed thus far apply only to soft real-time constraints with the percentage of missed deadlines being the metric. This implies that the use of the protocols is intended more to improve performance and not for increasing functionality, unlike in temporal and active databases. He emphasized that RTDB researchers must aim at achieving greater predictability in real-time databases so that we get imporved perfomance as well as predictability that is quantifiable, the latter is a property that is not achievable simply by "faster hardware". -------------------------------------------------------------------- Session 4: Scheduling Techniques for RTDB --------- This session was chaired by Al Mok of the University of Texas at Austin. The first paper was presented by Padron-McCarthy of Linkoping University in Sweden. This work applies the performance polymorphism ideas from imprecise computation research (e.g. FLEX language) to declarative query languages and to query optimization. The talk defines operations and transformations for producing imprecise results. The second paper was presented by Azer Bestavros of Boston University. The paper presents a paradigm for admission control in RTDB. It suggests that admission control (and overload management in general) is much more important than other RTDB resource management techniques (e.g. concurrency control and scheduling). For example, the paper shows that proper admission control makes simple concurrency control protocols (e.g. 2PL-HP protocols) perform as well as sophisticated ones (e.g. Wait-50 and SCC protocols). The particular paradigm presented allows for hard deadlines to be specified as deadlines on the termination of either the main transaction, whose WCET and resources are not known a priori, or on the termination of a smaller compensating "recovery block", whose WCET and resources are all known a priori. The third paper was presented by Aerts of Eindhoven University, Netherland. This paper argued that approximate analytical models of performance for real-time schedulers are important. One interesting aspect of the paper is the use of probabilistic and Markov models to describe conflicts between transactions (for example when trying to model OCC). The paper showed that for some systems, performance prediction through the use of analytical models of performance yields results that are quite good (compared to results obtained via simulations). Questions about the paper concentrated on the tractability of this approach. It may be possible to build models for simple protocols, but as the system complexity increases, it is not clear if such models could be generalized. The fourth paper was presented by Henky Agusleo of the University of Michigan. This paper argued for the use of special hardware support for high-performance main-memory databases through the use of logic-enhanced memories. The hardware support may be used to improve performance, but not "predictability". During the discussion that followed these presentations, there were questions about the "cost" of "fancy" RTDB protocols versus the cost of admission control. The motivation of the question was that RTDB must be "light weight" and that unless solutions we provide are easily portable, they will never be implemented in real-systems. Krithi Ramamritham intervened to give evidence of this from concurrency control research, where there are hundreds of algorithms proposed, but only few (mainly 2PL) implemented in real systems. In reference to admission control and overload management techniques in general, Azer Bestavros suggested that these techniques in effect reduce the overall overhead, because they make the use of other complicated real-time protocols (e.g. real-time concurrency control techniques) unnecessary! Another point brought up was that the techniques must be possible to add as a "layer" on top of existing off-the-shelf DB systems. Admission control and overload management is a good candidate "layer". To conclude this session, Al Mok challenged the participants to identify a set of properties that are worth proposing as "standard" properties of RTDBS (akin to the ACID properties of traditional DBMS). The discussion that ensued questioned whether a single model will ever be possible, given the richness of RTDB systems---a richness that comes from the disparity of application requirements. This point was very much emphasized by John Stankovic. Another thread in this discussion had to do with the "quantification" of predictability and perhaps the use of a probabilistic model (akin to the ideas from the 3rd paper in the session) or the use of values and various QOS guarantees (akin to the ideas from the second paper in the session). -------------------------------------------------------------------- Session 5: RTDB Models and Benchmarks --------- This session was chaired by J.Y. Chung of IBM. The first paper was presented by Marie-Anne Neimat from HP Labs. The paper addressed an important (and often neglected) aspect of RTDB systems---that of query optimization. It proposed a nice paradigm for cost modeling that abstracts away many of the details of the underlying machinery and algorithms. The paper focused on main-memory databases. It contrasted three different approaches, based on hardware costs, application costs, and execution costs, and argued that the latter provides rapid, accurate, and most importantly portable cost model. The cost modeling proceeds in two phases: model design and model instantiation/verification (what we may want to call model validation). The second involves determining the relative execution times for the various "variables" or "parameters" in the model. This is done through the execution of queries that differ *only* in the variable/parameter to be measured. There were a few questions and suggestions. In particular, the work as it stands does not allow for absolute timing analysis because the cost of various operations is measured in a relative fashion. A simple extension would allow the same paradigm to be used to provide estimation of "run time" of the queries, which is crucial for ensuring predictability. Another suggestion was related to "load parametrization" so that it may allow the estimation of cost to be parametrized based on the "load" in the system. The second paper was presented by Jonas Mellin of University Skovde of Sweden. The paper presents a model that could be used to derive the worst-case execution delay and maximum frequency of events in DeeDS---a prototype of distributed active real-time database systems being developed at University Skovde. Since concurrency control was not considered in the paper, several questions were raised about the correctness issues. The third paper was presented by Carolyn Boettcher of Hughes Aircraft Co. This paper offered a number of benchmarks that could be used to define the structure of an avionics database and test the various aspects of RTDB systems performance. The benchmarks were abstracted out from actual avionic systems. Seven test scenarios were defined ranging from periodic-readers-only to periodic-readers plus sporadic-readers plus periodic-updates. The paper fills in a void that was identified throughout the workshop---that of quantifying "RTDB" properties. The discussion that ensued reaffirmed the need for similar benchmarks for other applications. This paper fits well as a bridge between an "applications" paper and a "requirement specification for RTDB" paper. It could be improved by showing how these benchmarks could be extended for other applications. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Session 6: RTDB Models and Benchmarks --------- This session was chaired by Kane Kim of the University of California at Irvine. The first paper was presented by K.Y. Lam from the City University of Hong Kong. The paper studies how priorities should be assigned for sub-transactions in distributed real-time databases. Two approaches are used: one is based on the real-time constraint of the base transaction, and the other based on the data contention with other transactions. The performance of different strategies were studied by simulation. The second paper was presented by James Anderson of the University of North Carolina. This paper presented an efficient implementation of Optimistic Concurrency Control with Broadcast Commit (OCC-BC) using the idea of lock-free objects for main-memory RTDB systems, which is an efficient implementation technique that is applicable, not only to concurrency control for RTDB, but also to other problems involving synchronization. The last paper was presented by Gultekin Ozsoyoglu of Case Western Reserve University. This paper presents a "model" for cooperation between real-time transactions for multimedia. An implementation of the ECA (Event-Condition-Action) rules used in active databases was presented for cooperative real-time transactions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Session 7: Concurrency Control Issues --------- This session was chaired by Kang Shin of the University of Michigan. The first paper was presented by Michael Squadrito of MITRE. This paper presents an extension of priority-ceiling to be applied to object-oriented databases. The idea is an extension to the read/write priority ceiling protocol by defining a compatibility table for all the methods defined for an object, and then use this table to come up with an "affected set priority ceilings" (ASPC) that could be used to regulate the access to the object to ensure consistency. During the discussion, there were questions about the overhead of such an approach, because it requires (and the correctness depends on) the designers to identify the "conflict modes". There were questions regarding "automated" identification of a "default" compatibility table to assist the designers. The second paper was presented by Le Gruenwald of the University of Oklahoma. It presented a simulation study on the recovery issue for main-memory RTDBS. The main argument in the paper is to have the rate of data checkpointing related to the time-constraints associated with the data. The third paper was presented by Sharma Chakravarthy of the University of Florida. This paper presents a concurrency control algorithm that attempts to reduce the hazards of blocking-based algorithms and restart-based algorithms by suggesting an algorithm that combines them (using alternative "shadow"). The work is similar to the Speculative Concurrency Control (SCC) work by Bestavros and Braoudakis of Boston University (RTSS'94 and VLDB'95). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Session 8: ``Lessons Learned and Places To Go'' --------- This last session of the workshop was a panel discussion monitored by Program Co-Chair Sang Son. The panelists were Jane Liu, Al Mok, Kang Shin, and John Stankovic. Janet Prichard of U. Rhode Island was also invited to give a review of the current real-time SQL effort. Sang Son pointed out that RTDB'96 workshop was timely, since demand for advanced functionalities and timely management of data in new applications require practical solutions. He then asked each panelist whether the current research is on the right track and what are the remaining critical issues to be addressed. John Stankovic first identified the key issues for RTDB systems, including predictability, fault-tolerance, and QOS for multimedia management. He argued that the technologies developed by the RTDB research community should show that RTDB systems can do significantly better than traditional approaches vis-a-vis properties such as cost, performance, functionality, and availability. It was generally agreed that we should focus on a few driving applications in which traditional DBMS cannot serve or are very inefficient to serve. He also pointed out that integrated solutions for distributed RTDB systems architecture are needed. Jane Liu talked about the lessons we learned: how to schedule transactions using the timing constraints and how to maintain temporal consistency of data. She emphasized that we need to utilize semantic information and different query processing methods for QOS management. She also felt that deciding on a small set of effective concurrency control algorithms is important. Before this can be accomplished, however, some benchmarks for RTDB systems must be developed. Kang Shin argued that we need to develop real systems, demonstrating usefulness using benchmarks and real applications. The first step is to form a consensus on terminology and concepts being used within the RTDB research community. He also discussed some technical issues that are yet to be addressed, including OS interface, ACID-equivalent properties for RT transactions, and fault-tolerance issues. Finally, Al Mok pointed out that there are strong motivations behind the ACID properties: granularity, consistency, non-interference, and failure semantics. He argued that we need to consider what should be the right characterization of the requirements for real-time transactions. At the end of this panel, the workshop was declared a success. Most participants showed strong support to have the workshop continued next year. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgments --------------- Many people worked hard to make RTDB'96 workshop a success. The Program Committee members carefully reviewed and discussed every submitted paper. Special thanks go to Joyce Woodworth of the University of Illinois for managing the registration, and Azer Bestavros, the Publicity Chair, for advertising the workshop and encouraging submissions and participations. We are also grateful to the IEEE Technical Committee on Real-Time Systems, Departments of Computer Science at the University of Illinois, the University of Virginia and the University of California, Irvine, for their support. -------------------------------------------------------------------- The above document is also available as Technical Report TR-96-013 Boston University Computer Science Department and is accessible on the web from http://cs-www.bu.edu/techreports/96-013-rtdb96-report/Home.html or http://cs-www.bu.edu/techreports/96-013-rtdb96-report.ps.Z -------------------------------------------------------------------- Postmarked Wed Jul 3 00:01:17 1996 From: Azer Bestavros Subject: RTAS'96: Tutorial Notes available Content-Length: 447 For those of you who were unable to get copies of the slides for the following tutorials that were offered as part of RTAS'96 in Boston: - On ATM Support for Distributed Real-Time Applications, by Chia Chen - Real-Time Object-Oriented Modeling, by Bran Selic Please note that the slides for these tutorials are now available through the IEEE-CS TC-RTS Home Page at http://cs-www.bu.edu/pub/ieee-rts All the best, --Azer ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Message 2; Postmarked Mon Jun 10 08:13:54 1996 From: wsinjh@win.tue.nl (j.hooman) Subject: Postdoc position available in Eindhoven University of Technology Content-Length: 1389 Postdoc position available -------------------------- at the Department of Computing Science, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands, for a period of 3 years on "Formalization of system requirements" In the project ORKEST (research on the conditions for the construction of embedded systems), the company `Hollandse Signaalapparaten B.V.' has formulated three research themes. A subproject concerning the formalization of system requirements will be carried out by a postdoc at the EUT. Aim of the project is to investigate to what extent formal languages and methods can be useful for the formulation and validation of system requirements. The project focusses on the application domain of Command & Control systems. First an analysis of the application domain will be made. This gives an overview of the aspects that are relevant for the system requirements of such systems. Taking the application domain into account and aiming at applicability in an industrial context, a formal method shall be formulated. The resulting method shall be evaluated on a part of the system requirements of a realistic Command & Control system. Required: PhD in Computer Science with a good knowledge of formal methods and preferably some experience with requirements engineering. Information & applications: Jozef Hooman wsinjh@win.tue.nl ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Message 3; Postmarked Tue Jun 18 17:04:46 1996 From: Thomas Rakow Subject: Postdoc Positions at GMD-IPSI Content-Length: 1593 Research Positions Distributed Multimedia Information Systems The Integrated Publication and Information Systems Institute of GMD in Darmstadt, Germany offers young scientists the opportunity to work on innovative topics in an exciting environment. In the research divion "Distributed Multimedia Information Systems" is seeking for up to two post-docs. The emphasis is on: * Multimedia Database Systems * Data Warehousing and Mining * Cooperative Transaction Management * Application Development Each of the fully paid positions will have a duration of up to two years. A single extension by one additional year is possible. Funding can start soon. Applications must arrive as soon as possible but before July 15, 1996! For further information contact the following URL: http://www-dim.darmstadt.gmd.de:5000/dimsys/home.html Applicants must have a Ph.D. (or equivalent) and demonstrate research experience from projects in research institutions, universities or industry. Good knowledge of English or German is required. A statement of research qualification and interest should accompany the application. The applications should include the following: * Curriculum Vitae * Copies of university degrees * Letters of reference * Publication lists * Research plan Send your application in hard copy and a notice by e-mail to: Prof. Dr. Erich J. Neuhold GMD-IPSI Dolivostr.15 D-64293 Darmstadt Germany E-Mail: neuhold@darmstadt.gmd.de ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Message 4; Postmarked Thu Jun 20 06:32:41 1996 Subject: Post Doctoral Research Opportunity at University of Utah From: Content-Length: 2300 Post Doctoral Research Opportunity: Applying Formal Verification Methods to industrial-scale problems We are seeking a post-doctoral fellow to work in an exciting 3-year project expected to commence in a few months at the Department of Computer Science, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA. The project involves developing an integrated verification framework that addresses challenges in verifying real-life hardware/software systems such as shared memory multiprocessors. To address the sheer design complexity of such systems effectively, our proposed verification approach will involve a combination of formal requirements analysis, theorem-proving, and model-checking. There are several attractions to the advertised postdoc position. The new hire will directly fit within our group engaged in formal verification research. We have very good opportunities to demonstrate our results on non-trivial designs of current industrial interest because of the many large-scale system-design projects that are in progress in our Department (e.g. the Utah Avalanche project, and the Flux Operating System project). Additional attractions include salary in the range of $40K to $55K (depending on experience and education), excellent computing facilities, and (last, but not least) innumerable outdoor possibilities that Mother nature offers in Utah. Our past and related research can be traced beginning at http://www.cs.utah.edu/projects. To know more about our planned activities, send me an email at ganesh@cs.utah.edu. To express serious interest, kindly email me your resume. Minimum qualifications sought include a PhD in Computer Science or related disciplines, and experience with at least one formal verification approach. The University of Utah is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action Employer and encourages nominations and applications from women and minorities, and provides reasonable accommodation to the known disabilities of applicants and employees. Feel free to forward this message. Ganesh Gopalakrishnan ganesh@cs.utah.edu Associate Professor, Phone: (801) 581-3568 Computer Science, Fax : (801) 581-5843 4540 Merrill Engineering Building, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Message 5; Postmarked Wed May 22 01:16:22 1996 Subject: CAV 96: Call for Participation From: tah@eecs.berkeley.edu (Tom Henzinger) Sender: tah@ic.eecs.berkeley.edu Content-Length: 1497 Call for Participation Eighth International Conference on COMPUTER-AIDED VERIFICATION (CAV 96) July 30 - August 3, 1996 Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA Hosted by DIMACS with support from Lucent Technologies Bell Labs Cadence Berkeley Labs Siemens Corporate Research and Development The CAV series is dedicated to the advancement of the theory and practice of computer-assisted formal analysis methods for software and hardware systems. The conference covers the spectrum from theoretical results to concrete applications, with an emphasis on verification tools and the algorithms and techniques that are needed for their implementation. CAV 96 is part of the Federated Logic Conference (FLoC), July 27 - August 3, 1996. In addition to CAV, FLoC includes the following related conferences: IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (LICS), Rewriting Techniques and Applications (RTA), and Conference on Automated Deduction (CADE). CAV overlaps with CADE, and participants registering for CAV can attend CADE sessions, and vice versa. For more information, please check CAV 96 Home pages at http://www.research.att.com/lics http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/People/tah/cav96.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Message 6; Postmarked Wed Jun 5 14:20:08 1996 From: watson@dan.cs.usu.edu (Dan Watson) Subject: HCW '97: Call for Participation Content-Length: 1867 HETEROGENEOUS COMPUTING WORKSHOP Geneva, Switzerland - Tuesday, April 1, 1997 In conjunction with IPPS '97 - April 1-5, 1997 CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: The 6th Heterogeneous Computing Workshop (HCW '97) will be held in Geneva, Switzerland on April 1, 1997. HCW '97 is part of the 11th International Parallel Processing Symposium (IPPS '97) which is sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Parallel Processing and is held in cooperation with ACM SIGARCH. Heterogeneous computing systems range from diverse elements within a single computer to coordinated, geographically distributed machines with different architectures. A heterogeneous computing system provides a variety of capabilities that can be orchestrated to execute multiple tasks with varied computational requirements. Applications in these environments achieve performance by exploiting the affinity of different tasks to different computational platforms or paradigms, while considering the overhead of inter-task communication and the coordination of distinct data sources and/or administrative domains. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to, task profiling, network profiling, configuration tools, scheduling tools, analytic benchmarking, programming paradigms, problem mapping, processor assignment and scheduling, fault tolerance, programming tools, processor selection criteria, and compiler assistance. The topics listed are representative; all aspects of heterogeneous computing are of interest. HCW '97 plans include a keynote address, invited case studies, and submitted research papers. Selected papers may require revision and re-review. See http://www.cs.nps.navy.mil/people/faculty/hensgen for the latest information concerning the workshop and http://cuiwww.unige.ch/~ipps97 for the latest information on IPPS. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Message 7; Postmarked Mon Jun 17 10:40:23 1996 From: Matz Kindahl Subject: FTRTFT '96: Program And Call For Registration Content-Length: 1599 FTRTFT'96 4th International School and Symposium Formal Techniques in Real Time and Fault Tolerant Systems Sept 9-10 (School) and Sept 11-13 (Symposium) 1996, Uppsala, Sweden PROGRAMME and CALL FOR REGISTRATION OBJECTIVES Computer systems are becoming increasingly widespread in real-time and safety-critical applications. Such systems are characterized by the crucial need to manage their complexity in order to produce reliable designs. Formal techniques offer a foundation for systematic design of complex systems. They have beneficial applications throughout the engineering process, from the capture of requirements through specification, design, coding and compilation, down to the hardware which embeds the system into its environment. Their use may presuppose novel system architectures and design principles. The school and symposium are devoted to considering the problems and the solutions in safe system design, and to examining how well the use of advanced design techniques and formal methods for design, analysis and verification serves in relating theory to practical realities. This is the fourth in a line of International Schools and Symposia, previous were held at Warwick 1989, at Nijmegen 1992, and at L%beck 1994. Proceedings of these symposia are published as volumes 331, 571, and 863 in the LNCS series by Springer Verlag. FOR MORE INFORMATION http://www.docs.uu.se/ftrtft96/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Message 8; Postmarked Thu Jun 20 06:33:01 1996 Subject: FME 97: Call for Submissions From: Dominique Mery Content-Length: 2676 FORMAL METHODS EUROPE FME'97 International Symposium and Tutorials 15--19 September 1997 The Technical University of Graz, Austria Sponsored by the Commission of the European Communities Call for Submissions ******************** The Technical University of Graz will host the fourth FME Symposium >from 15 to 19 September 1997. It is being organised by Formal Methods Europe which is the advisory panel of the Commission of the European Communities. This will be the successor of six previous VDM and FME symposia which have been notably successful in bringing together users, researchers and developers of precise mathematical methods for software development. The theme of FME'97 is Formal Methods: Their Industrial Application and Strengthened Foundations. Symposium contributions will report advances in the field from developments in applicable theory to experiences in commercial application. The conference will also follow the previous successful pattern of offering tutorials, tools demonstrations, reports of industry usage and research papers. Categories of Papers: three kinds of full-length paper are solicited: 1. reports on industrial usage; 2. research papers on existing methods (for instance: extensions, innovative case studies); 3. articles on stimulating theoretical research with clear potential applicability. Authors are requested to mention the category (1, 2, or 3) of their papers when they submit. TOPICS The scope of the symposium includes, but is not limited to, the following topics: * Practical use, case studies * Comparisons of existing formal methods, extensions, improvement * Theoretical foundations * Tool support * Specification and refinement techniques * Verification against specifications * Development process * Linking formal and informal methods * Concurrency, real-time and reactive systems * Secure or/and safety-critical systems * Object orientation * Education and technology transfer Submissions are encouraged from the full range of application areas including medical systems, aerospace and avionics, telecommunication, traffic modelling and transportation systems, nuclear safety, process and off-shore industries. For more information contact Organising Chair: Peter Lucas, IST, Technical University of Graz, A-8010 Graz, Muenzgrabenstrasse 11/II, Fax: +43 316 841 7566, Tel: +43 316 873 5712, Email: lucas@ist.tu-graz.ac.at ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Message 9; Postmarked Tue Jun 25 21:33:57 1996 From: Nandit Soparkar Subject: DART'96 Workshop: Call for Papers Content-Length: 4552 Event: Workshop on Databases: Active & Real-Time (Concepts meet Practice) (DART'96) Location: Doubletree Hotel, Rockville, Maryland Date: November 15, 1996. (The day following CIKM'96) Association: 5th Int'l Conference on Information & Knowledge Management 1996. CIKM'96 is sponsored by (pending approval) ACM SIGART & SIGIR, in cooperation with (pending approval) NASA, Bellcore, NSF, AAAI, IEEE Computer Society, ACM SIGMOD, CACS/USL, UMBC. Contact: Prof. Nandit Soparkar Prof. Krithi Ramamritham (Program Chair) (General Chair) EECS Department CS Department Univ of Michigan, Ann Arbor Univ of Massachusetts, Amherst soparkar@eecs.umich.edu krithi@cs.umass.edu (313) 647-4849 (413) 545-0196 Scope: Applications such as manufacturing automation, automated stock-trading, avionics, medical informatics, intelligent transportation systems, telecommunications, multimedia systems, workflow systems, etc. make substantial use of databases but require support beyond those provided by traditional databases. These include support for timeliness and for rule-based activiation of tasks --- topics that are being investigated by researchers working on active and real-time database technologies. However, the understanding of the application requirements, the available technology, and the nexus between research and practice, are still nascent. This one-day workshop is to provide a forum whereby practitioners and researchers can exchange ideas --- primarily with a focus on data management issues in applications with active and real-time requirements. Rather than being a forum in which to report only new research results, this workshop is to provide a means for researchers to understand the needs that application developers have, and for developers to learn about solutions available today. This should assist in the discussion of specific issues, problem areas, and potential solutions, and provide impetus for further research as well as the transition of available technology. In order to promote the discussions, we solicit brief papers (up to 5 pages, submitted electronically to the program chair) that describe technical contributions in the area w.r.t. research, on-going work, implementation efforts etc. The selected papers will be provided to the participants at the Workshop, and are expected to be published subsequently in a proceedings by ACM. The workshop will consist of brief invited and paper presentations in the first half of the day, followed by in-depth discussions during the latter half of the day. The suggested topics include, but are not limited to: Practice - Research - Manufacturing technology Triggers and constraints Multimedia applications Real-time concurrency control Avionics systems Quality of service Process control Distributed data management Telecommunications Scheduling for data accesses Intelligent transportation Object-oriented paradigms Medical informatics Specifications and tools Real-time Web applications Interactions with OS & network Program stock-trading Reliability and dependability Synchronous collaboration Monitoring and activation Dates: Submission - Aug 20, 1996 Notification - Sep 30, 1996 Final versions - Oct 15, 1996 Workshop - Nov 15, 1996 Program Committee: Elisa Bertino (Univ Milano) Azer Bestavros (Boston Univ) Alejandro Buchmann (Tech Univ Darmstadt) Stefano Ceri (Politec di Milano) Umesh Dayal (HP Laboratories) Aleks Gollu (PATH, UC Berkeley) H V Jagadish (AT&T Research) Anant Jhingran (IBM Research) Madhur Kohli (Bellcore) Jane Liu (Univ Illinois) Doug Locke (Lockheed Martin) James Moyne (DTM, Michigan) S Seshadri (Ind Inst Tech Bombay) Sang Son (Univ Virginia) Bhavani Thuraisingham (Mitre) Ozgur Ulusoy (Bilkent Univ) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Message 10; Postmarked Wed Jun 26 11:14:27 1996 Subject: HART'97, First Call for Papers From: Oded Maler Content-Length: 2584 First Call for Papers International Workshop on Hybrid and Real-Time Systems (HART'97) March 26-28, 1997 Grenoble, France During the last couple of years, the interest in hybrid (discrete continuous) models for modern control systems has been steadily growing. These are systems in which physical devices interact with controllers which incorporate discrete as well as classical components. Research on hybrid systems tries to meet the challenges of such complex systems by offering various formal models that employ continuous and discrete components such as timed and hybrid automata, piecewise-linear dynamical systems, etc., and by investigating the application of classical control and computer science notions and techniques (e.g., modelling, stability analysis, verification, control synthesis, simulation) to these models. The hybrid nature of the models encourages the use of diverse mathematical tools originating from both computer science (e.g., logic and theorem proving, automata and graph algorithms) and more traditional mathematics and engineering (dynamical systems, control theory, linear algebra, symbolic computation). Such techniques should be present in future tools for automating some of the activities associated with the design of hybrid systems. The three-day workshop will combine invited talks and presentations of accepted submissions. Submissions are invited in all areas pertaining to the formal verification and control of embedded systems. Topics include, but are not limited to, formal models and specification languages, algorithmic and deductive verification, control and optimization, simulation and testing, design and synthesis, complexity and decidability issues, automatic and interactive tools, experimental results and applications. The contributed papers will be divided into two categories: 1) Regular (category A) papers will be judged according to the following criteria: Theoretical papers are expected to present original and meaningful results. More practical papers should present the application of a sound methodology or a tool to a non-trivial case-study. 2) Short papers (category B) could be either a position paper or a survey of one's own research on hybrid systems, as well as tool description. The program committee can transfer a paper from one category to another. For more information contact: Oded Maler VERIMAG, Miniparc ZIRST, 38330 Montbonnot, France Email: hart97@imag.fr ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Message 11; Postmarked Wed Jun 26 11:14:27 1996 Subject: HART'97, First Call for Papers From: jorgen@ida.his.se (Jorgen Hansson) Content-Length: 2757 ARTDB-97 - International Workshop on Active and Real-Time Database Systems June 6-8 1997 at the University of Skovde, Sweden Scope ----- Following the success of ARTDB-95 (1st International Workshop on Active and Real-Time Database Systems), the successor ARTDB-97 will once again bring researchers and practitioners in the areas of active and real-time databases together to discuss research and implementation issues for supporting active time-constrained database systems. The areas of active and real-time databases have seen tremendous growth in the last few years. Availability of rules/triggers as part of database functionality is likely to change the way databases are modeled and applications are written. The functionality supported by active database systems is meant to meet the requirements of a number of emerging applications (such as workflow, air traffic control, CIM, network management, stock trading) where the correctness of execution is based not only on transaction semantics, but also on the timeliness of the result. Hence, the integration of active functionality, time component, and real-time capability seems to be the next logical step. Although extensive research has been carried out in both areas, few proposals have been made to integrate active and real-time capabilities. ARTDB-97 Organization Jorgen Hansson, University of Skovde, Sweden (jorgen@ida.his.se) Mikael Berndtsson, University of Skovde, Sweden (spiff@ida.his.se) Program Committee Azer Bestavros, USA Alex Buchmann, Germany Sharma Chakravarthy, USA Umesh Dayal, USA Oscar Diaz, Spain Klaus R. Dittrich, Switzerland Narain Gehani, USA Wolfgang Halang, Germany Farnam Jahanian, USA Kam-yiu Lam, Hongkong Kwei-Jay Lin, USA Brian Lings, UK Norman Paton, UK Krithi Ramamritham, USA Tore Risch , Sweden Timos Sellis, Greece Sang H. Son, USA John A. Stankovic, USA the list is not complete For more information check ARTDB'97 Home Page at http://www.his.se/ida/%7Ejorgen/ARTDB-97/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<* END OF THE IEEE-CS TC-RTS NEWSLETTER *>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The TC-RTS repository is maintained by Azer Bestavros at Boston University WWW Home Page of the TC-RTS is at: http://cs-www.bu.edu/pub/ieee-rts/Home.html Internet address for anonymous FTP to the TC-RTS repository is: cs-ftp.bu.edu Contributions to this forum should be sent via E-mail to: IEEE-RTTC@cs.bu.edu Requests / inquiries should be sent via E-mail to: IEEE-RTTC-request@cs.bu.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------------