Call for Papers: Middleware 2004 ACM/IFIP/USENIX International Middleware Conference (society sponsorship pending) Toronto, Ontario, Canada October 18th - 22nd, 2004 http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/middleware2004/ Overview Requirements for faster development cycles, decreased development efforts, greater software reuse, and better end-to-end control over system resources are motivating the creation and use of middleware systems and middleware-based architectures. Middleware is systems software that resides between the applications and the underlying operating systems, network protocol stacks, and hardware. Its primary role is to functionally bridge the gap between application programs and the lower-level hardware and software infrastructure in order to coordinate how application components are connected and how they interoperate. Furthermore, middleware enables and simplifies the integration of components developed by multiple technology suppliers. In this sense middleware systems are sets of services and abstractions that facilitate the development and deployment of distributed applications in heterogeneous, distributed, computing environments. Next-generation distributed applications and systems will increasingly be developed using middleware. This dependency poses hard challenges, including latency hiding, masking partial failures, information assurance and security, legacy integration, dynamic service partitioning and load balancing, and end-to-end quality of service specification and enforcement. To address these challenges, researchers and practitioners need to discover and validate techniques, patterns, and optimizations for middleware frameworks, multi-level distributed resource management, and adaptive and reflective middleware architectures. Following the success of past conferences in this series, the 5th International Middleware Conference will be the premier event for middleware research and technology in 2004. The scope of the conference is the design, implementation, deployment, and evaluation of distributed system platforms and architectures for future computing and communication environments. Highlights of the conference will include a high quality technical program, tutorials, invited speakers, poster presentations, and workshops. The proceedings of Middleware 2004 will be published as a Springer-Verlag volume in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science Series. For paper formatting instructions see the Springer-Verlag guidelines for authors. All papers should be no more than 20 pages in length. For more detailed submission instructions, please visit the Middleware 2004 web site. Topics of Interest The topics of this conference include, but are not limited to: Distributed real-time and embedded middleware platforms Reliable and fault-tolerant middleware platforms Support for multimedia in middleware platforms Middleware for Grid computing Novel quality of service architectures and evaluation techniques Event-based, publish/subscribe and messaging-oriented middleware platforms Open architectures for reconfigurable middleware Adaptive and reflective middleware Aspect-oriented middleware Generative programming techniques for middleware development Middleware protocols and services for information assurance and security Formal methods and tools for reasoning about middleware systems and services Management and use of component-based systems in distributed environments Applications of middleware technologies, including telematics, command and control, avionics, and e-commerce Novel paradigms, APIs, and languages for distributed systems Integration of middleware with model-integrated computing architectures, such as the OMG's Model Driven Architecture (MDA) Extensions and refinements to RM-ODP, CORBA, J2EE, .NET, etc. Impact of emerging Internet technologies and standards on middleware platforms Integration of middleware platforms with Web services and Java technologies Distributed systems management and interactive configuration and development tools Issues of scalability in existing and new distributed systems platforms Engineering distributed systems in heterogeneous and mobile networks Middleware for ubiquitous and mobile computing Organization General Chair: Steve Vinoski (IONA Technologies, Inc.) Program Chair: Hans-Arno Jacobsen (University of Toronto, Canada) WiP Papers Chair: Jean Bacon (Cambridge University, UK) Tutorials Chair: Stefan Tai (IBM T.J. Watson, USA) Advanced Workshops Chair: Fabio Kon (USP, Brazil) Posters Chair: Eyal de Lara (University of Toronto, Canada) Local Arrangements Chair: Baochun Li (University of Toronto, Canada) Publicity Chair: Cristiana Amza (University of Toronto, Canada) Program Committee Gul Agha (U. of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, USA) Gustavo Alonso (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) Jean Bacon (Cambridge U., UK) Mark Baker (Canada) Guruduth Banavar (IBM T.J. Watson, USA) Alejandro Buchmann (Darmstadt U. of Technology, Germany) Andrew Campbell (Columbia U., USA) Roy Campbell (U. of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, USA) Harold Carr (Sun, USA) Geoff Coulson (Lancaster U., UK) Prem Devanbu (UC Davis, USA) Jan DeMeer (IHP-Microelectronics, Germany) Naranker Dulay (Imperial College, UK) Markus Endler (PUC-Rio, Brazil) Mike Feeley (U. of British Columbia, Canada) Chris Gill (Washington U., St. Louis, USA) Aniruddha Gokhale (Vanderbilt U., USA) Peter Honeyman (CITI, U. of Michigan, USA) Bettina Kemme (McGill U., Canada) Fabio Kon (U. of Sao Paulo, Brazil) Doug Lea (SUNY Oswego, USA)Joe Loyall (BBN Technologies, USA) Edmundo Madeira (U. of Campinas, Brazil) Keith Moore (HP Laboratories, USA) Hausi Muller (U. of Victoria, Canada) Klara Nahrstedt (U. of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, USA) Dennis Noll (Boeing, USA) Kerry Raymond (DSTC, Australia) Luis Rodrigues (U. of Lisboa, Portugal) Isabelle Rouvellou (IBM T.J. Watson, USA) Michael Stal (Siemens, Germany) Rick Schantz (BBN Technologies, USA) Douglas Schmidt (Vanderbilt U., USA) Jean-Bernard Stefani (INRIA, Grenoble, France) Joe Sventek (University of Glasgow, UK) Janos Sztipanovits (Vanderbilt U., USA) Stefan Tai (IBM T.J. Watson, USA) Peter Triantafillou (U. of Patras, Greece) Nalini Venkatasubramanian (U. of California, Irvine, USA) Werner Vogels (Cornell U., USA) Martina Zitterbart (U. of Karlsruhe, Germany) Submission Deadlines Abstract submission: March 30th, 2004 Research Papers: April 6th, 2004 Work in Progress Papers: April 6th, 2004 Posters: July 10th, 2004 Workshop Proposals: March 30th, 2004 Tutorial Proposals: May 11th, 2004 **All deadlines are 11:59pm PST.** Notification of acceptance (papers): Monday June 14th, 2004 Camera-ready papers due (papers): Monday July 12th, 2004 More Information For further information and submission instructions, please visit http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/middleware2004/ . Please also see the following web sites of related conferences: - VLDB 2004 http://www.vldb04.org/ is the web site to the 30th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases also to be held in Toronto, Canada - PODC 2004 http://www.podc.org/podc2004/ is the web site for the 23rd Annual ACM SIGACT-SIGOPS Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing) and of the Workshop on Concurrency and Synchronization in Java Programs which will be held in conjuction. We appologize if you receive multiple copies of this message.