AIMS & SCOPE

Nowadays, most aspects of our daily life are affected by pervasive technology, consisting of massive numbers of heterogeneous units/nodes (computers, devices, software applications, smart objects, etc.), complex interactions, and humans-in-the-loop. The distributed and open nature of these systems and their large scale make sensing, decision-making, planning and acting possibly highly dispersed: this may cause on the one hand the emergence of unexpected phenomena, but on the other hand it can be the key to support inherent adaptation and resilience.

These complex systems are typically referred to as Collective Adaptive Systems (CAS). They have to be equipped with dynamic and autonomous adaptation capabilities, to deal with changes in their working environments and within themselves. CAS involve huge collections of cooperating components, trading off individual tasks, properties, objectives and actions, with overall system goals.

The development of CAS is closely related to the area of production-level enterprise applications, with a special interest in the development, design, maintenance, scalability and other software quality attributes of Middleware. This track aims at providing a common forum for discussing the various different viewpoints over CAS and related middleware, attracting relevant and consistent contributions from different research communities, with the ultimate goal of filling the gap between theory and practice, hence paving the way towards implementation of relevant applications.

The Special Track on Collective Adaptive Systems and Middleware takes deliberately a broad view of what CAS and related middleware are and how they should be designed, analysed, built and deployed. In particular, the track's interest is both in the foundational view (e.g., theories, methods, formalisms, models) and the practical aspects (e.g., development methodologies, programming languages, development and runtime environments, tools).

Major topics of interest this year will include the following:

• Novel models, languages, programming and implementation techniques for CAS
• CAS technologies and infrastructures
• CAS applications
• Scenarios, case studies and experience reports of CAS
• Formal aspects (semantics, reasoning, verification) in CAS development
• Business Processes in CAS
• Self-* and emerging properties of CAS
• Security and privacy in CAS
• Policy-based coordination and self-adaptation in CAS
• Middleware platforms for CAS
• Software architectures and engineering methodologies for CAS
• Enterprise Application Development and Design
• Cloud and cluster computing of Enterprises
• Internet of Things applications
• Design patterns and best practices
• System integration, service composition
• Production deployment experience
• Development and maintenances effort studies
• Design complexity and coupling measurement
• Applied separation of concerns (Aspect-Oriented Programming)
• Code-inspections and metaprogramming
• Context-aware and adaptive systems
• User interface design in the context of software engineering
• Highly-scalable systems
• Peer-to-peer applications design
• Information system security

IMPORTANT DATES

• Oct 07, 2016: Papers and SRC research abstracts submission (extended)
• Nov 18, 2016: Author notification
• Dec 02, 2016: Camera-Ready copy
• Dec 10, 2016: Author registration

PROGRAM CO-CHAIRS

PROGRAM COMMITTEE MEMBERS

PROCEEDINGS

Papers accepted for the Special Track on Collective Adaptive Systems and Middleware will be published by ACM both in the SAC 2017 proceedings and in the Digital Library.

CASM Special Track organisers also plan to invite authors of selected papers for a Special Issue in a high impact journal, such as ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems (TAAS) and Science of Computer Programming (SCP).

PAPER SUBMISSION AND FORMAT

All papers should represent original and previously unpublished works that currently are not under review in any conference or journal.

The author(s) name(s) and address(es) must NOT appear in the body of the paper, and self-reference should be in the third person. This is to facilitate blind review. Only the title should be shown at the first page without the authors' information.

Submitted papers must be in the ACM two-column page format (doc template, pdf template, latex template). The length of the papers is 6 pages (included in the registration) plus up to 2 extra pages (at extra charge), i.e. total 8 pages maximum.

Paper registration is required, allowing the inclusion of the paper/poster in the conference proceedings. An author or a proxy attending SAC MUST present the paper: This is a requirement for the paper/poster to be included in the ACM/IEEE digital library. No-show of scheduled papers and posters will result in excluding them from the ACM/IEEE digital library.

Submission is entirely automated via the STAR Submission System, which is available from:

• (for regular papers) https://www.softconf.com/h/sac2017/
• (for SRC papers) https://www.softconf.com/h/sac-src2017/

POSTER SESSIONS

Papers that received high reviews (that is acceptable by reviewer standards) but were not accepted due to space limitation can be invited for the poster session. Poster should be not longer than 3 pages (included in the registration) plus 1 extra page (at extra charge), i.e. total 4 pages maximum. The poster session procedures and details will be posted on SAC 2017 website as soon as they become available.

STUDENT RESEARCH ABSTRACTS COMPETITION

Graduate students are invited to submit Student Research Competition (SRC) abstracts (maximum of 2 pages in ACM camera-ready format) following the instructions published at SAC 2017 website. Submission of the same abstract to multiple tracks is not allowed. All research abstract submissions will be reviewed by researchers and practitioners with expertise in the track focus area to which they are submitted. Authors of selected abstracts (up to 20 students) will have the opportunity to give poster and oral presentations of their work and compete for three top-winning places. The winners will receive medals, cash awards, and SIGAPP recognition certificates during the conference banquet. Invited students receive SRC travel support (US$500) and are eligible to apply to the SIGAPP Student Travel Award Program (STAP) for additional travel support.