• Call for papers

• Call for papers

Middleware technologies consist of various components that form the infrastructure, or plumbing, of distributed applications. It has been widely acknowledged that middleware quality plays a critical role on the end-to-end quality of distributed applications, which are characterised by a constant variation of location and intensity of users and/or services.

The first workshop in this series (Workshop on Middleware and Performance – WOMP 2006) explored methods and tools for performance of middleware systems based on emerging technologies including grid applications, web services and context-aware mobile applications. In this new edition the workshop is going to broaden the scope by specifically addressing additional quality attributes of service-oriented applications, or applications based on service-oriented architectures (SOAs), including performance, reliability and security.

Today, middleware-related technologies and architectural patterns of middleware are more and more at the basis of SOA-based applications. Each choice of technologies and architectural patterns has a significant impact on the QoS (quality of service) of the final application. Performance, reliability and security are now becoming key parts of the governance framework for SOA-based implementations. In such a context, it is essential to introduce mechanisms and methods that evaluate the impact on these quality attributes when a service governance assertion is mapped to specific middleware technologies and architectural patterns. Once services are deployed, maintaining the QoS of SOA-based applications is also very challenging. Changes in or degradation of one or more quality attributes for one service could break many applications. The loosely coupled nature of SOA-based applications makes the monitoring of services a very challenging instrument in such an environment. In addition, semantic SOA are also of interest, since they put together classical SOA technologies and emergent ontologies e.g. in ubiquitous computing middleware and other seamless connectivity systems.

This workshop solicits papers on methods, measures, and tools for QoS management in the very broad context of middleware systems. This includes middleware infrastructures, interaction paradigms, communication protocols, software architectures, middleware applications, other non functional quality attributes and their relationship with the overall QoS. A special interest is given to papers with insightful solutions towards service-oriented middleware.

Topics of Interest

The topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Service governance and QoS implications
• Middleware profiling for gathering QoS data
• Middleware infrastructures to manage and improve QoS
• QoS trade-off assessments, including measures, methods and models that integrate performance and QoS aspects of middleware systems such as maintainability, security, safety, availability, interoperability.
• QoS issues in adaptive/reflective middleware
• QoS-aware middleware support
• Specification and analysis of quality attributes of middleware for distributed simulation
• Monitoring mechanisms and tools for middleware-based distributed applications
• Quality models and metrics for service-oriented middleware
• Quantitative modelling and analysis of service compositions and service-based workflows
• QoS for mobile, ad-hoc and sensor networks
• QoS studies of communication paradigms, such as peer-to-peer, event-based, message-oriented and publish/subscribe
• Model-driven approaches to QoS management and governance of SOA-based applications
• QoS management of SOA-based applications at design, deployment and execution time
• Case studies and experience reports