mhi@edsdrd.eds.com (Mamdouh Ibrahim) (08/23/90)
Because of the late mailing of the advanced program of the ECOOP/OOPSLA
conference, the deadline for submission of position papers to the Workshop
on Refelction and Metalevel Architectures has been extended to September
4th, 1990. Following is the modified CFP.
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
ECOOP/OOPSLA-90 Workshop on
Reflection and Metalevel Architectures
in Object-Oriented Programming
Monday, October 22, 1990
Ottawa, Canada
Reflective programming languages have tremendous practical value. In
fact, external facilities are often provided for non-reflective
languages to mimic reflective behaviors. Reflective languages provide
natural debugging and tracing facilities as part of the language and
not as facilities supplied by the external environment. A reflective
language is also capable of performing self evaluation tasks such as
code analysis and verification, which are difficult to achieve in a
non-reflective language.
This workshop will focus on all issues related to reflection and
metalevel architectures in object-oriented programming. Presentations
and discussion will address both the theoretical foundations and
practical applications of reflection in programming languages and
environments.
The workshop will have three main sessions: theory, implementation,
and applications. In the first session, participants are expected to
define precisely the vocabulary and terminology used for describing
reflection in programming languages in general and in OOP in
particular. Examples of such vocabulary are reification, metalevel,
reflective facilities, structure reflection, and computational
reflection.
As part of this session, the discussion should also identify the
relationship between metalevel architectures and reflection in
object-oriented programming. For example, are metaobjects and
metalevel architectures necessary, sufficient, or necessary and
sufficient to achieve reflection, and if so why? The discussion should
also address the problems associated with infinite metaregression and
whether these problems represent, in theory, a threat to the concept
of reflection.
The second session will focus on practical issues related to
implementation of reflective object-oriented languages and
environments. Participants will discuss architectures of current
languages that support reflective facilities and how they achieve
reflection. The penalties and/or efficiency considerations that result
from implementing reflection in a language and the techniques used to
deal with these issues should be addressed as part of this session.
The last session will be devoted to applications that benefit from
reflection and metalevel architectures. Examples of such applications
are concurrency, distributed systems, persistent objects/databases,
language extensions, and self modifying code. Participants should
focus on features of the reflective facilities that facilitate the
implementation of their applications and discuss the difficulties they
may encounter if the application was implemented in a non-reflective
environment.
Workshop attendance will be by invitation only and is limited to 30
participants. Invitations will be issued on the basis of extended
abstracts or position papers. Appropriate papers should not be less
than 3 single spaced pages and should state clearly their authors'
position and supporting arguments for issues related to one or more of
the following topics:
- Definitions and terminology of reflection.
- Architectures for achieving reflection.
- The level on which reflection is implemented (object, underlying
language, metalevel).
- Implementation of OOP languages and environments that support
reflection.
- Advantages and disadvantages of reflection in OOP.
- Reflection in concurrent systems.
- Applications of reflective facilities.
The papers will be reviewed by members of the workshop committee and
acceptance will be based on both the relevance of the work to the
workshop theme and the quality and clarity of the papers. Accepted
papers will be distributed to the participants before the workshop,
and based on the workshop outcome, we may elect to generate some form
of formal publication that will include longer versions of the
accepted submissions.
Send five copies of extended abstract before September 4, 1990 to:
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Mamdouh H. Ibrahim
EDS Research & Development
3551 Hamlin Rd, 4th. Floor
Auburn Hills, MI 48057 USA
Phone: (313) 370-1629
e-mail: mhi@edsdrd.eds.com
Important Dates:
----------------
September 4, 1990 Deadline for receiving extended abstracts.
September 28, 1990 Notification of invitation or rejection.
For further information, contact any of the workshop organizers.
Workshop organizers:
--------------------
Jean-Pierre Briot (European Coordinator)
Universite Paris VI - LITP briot@litp.ibp.fr
Brian Foote (USA Coordinator)
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign foote@cs.uiuc.edu
Gregor Kiczales (USA Coordinator)
Xerox PARC gregor.pa@xerox.com
Mamdouh H. Ibrahim (Chair)
EDS Research & Development mhi@edsdrd.eds.com
Satoshi Matsuoka (Far East Coordinator)
University of Tokyo, Japan matsu@is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Takuo Watanabe (Far East Coordinator)
Tokyo Institute of Technology Japan takuo@is.titech.ac.jp