>Approved-By:  John McCormick <[log in to unmask]>
>Date:         Wed, 3 Feb 1999 07:58:16 -0600
>Sender: ACM SIGAda Announcement List <[log in to unmask]>
>From: John McCormick <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject:      Spec. Issue on Developing Fault-Tolerant Systems with Ada (Int.
>              Journal of CSSE)
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>=========================================================================
>International Journal of Computer Systems: Science & Engineering
>(http://www.dircon.co.uk/crl/csse.htm)
>
>Call for Papers
>Special Issue on Developing Fault-Tolerant Systems with Ada
>(http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/alexander.romanovsky/home.formal/ftada.html)
>
>Aims and Scope
>In spite of all efforts devoted to improving the quality of software
>systems, the goal of meeting high dependability requirements cannot be
>achieved without accepting that there are always design faults in software,
>that hardware can fail, operators can misuse systems and environment can
>misbehave. Fault tolerance techniques are traditionally used for dealing
>with such problems.
>
>Ada is a safe language used in many industrial application areas. The new
>standard, accepted in 1995, opens a new era in developing software because
>it is unique in that it combines object-orientation, concurrency,
>real-time, distributedness, etc. within a single language framework.
>
>Applying general fault tolerance schemes in practice is not a simple task
>because the most widely used languages and operating systems have no
>explicit fault tolerance mechanisms. Due to the uniqueness of Ada, a lot of
>problems related to constructing fault tolerant algorithms can be addressed
>on the language level. This simplifies the understanding of solutions,
>eases result promulgation, allows re-use and facilitates the inclusion of
>fault tolerance software into many development phases (e.g. debugging,
>testing). The challenge here is to develop a convincing number of useful
>fault tolerance techniques, to summarise experience and to intensify the
>sharing of all results related to fault tolerance in Ada. We believe that
>it is the right time to collect the results of developing fault tolerant
>systems and fault tolerance techniques in one special issue because this
>will have a serious impact on using the language in industry and,
>hopefully, will improve the dependability of the systems under development.
>
>The solutions we are looking for should be easy to apply, re-usable and
>should use all advantages of the language. We encourage submissions which
>include access to software prototypes.
>
>Topics
>This special issue invites papers with focus on research results,
>experience reports, and brief surveys/tutorials on emerging research
>challenges related to developing both Ada fault tolerant software and Ada
>fault tolerance schemes in, but not limited to, the following areas:
>
>- General topics:
>        - tolerating hardware faults (computers, devices, communication media);
>        - tolerating software faults;
>        - structuring techniques (e.g. actions of different sorts) and
>fault tolerance;
>        - validation of fault tolerant systems;
>        - developing new fault tolerant architectures.
>- Techniques:
>        - software diversity;
>        - error detection;
>        - assertions;
>        - reliable communication;
>        - replication;
>        - using exception handling for fault tolerance;
>        - backward and forward error recovery;
>        - state restoration and checkpointing.
>- Application specific problems:
>        - distributed systems;
>        - heterogeneous systems;
>        - asynchronous and concurrent systems;
>        - real-time and safety critical systems;
>        - control systems;
>        - multi-language systems;
>        - survivable systems;
>        - web applications.
>- Results and experience from industry (aerospace, avionics, railway, etc.).
>
>Submissions
>An electronic version of the abstract is to be sent to A. Romanovsky at:
>[log in to unmask] Full submissions are to be forwarded to one
>of the guest editors (electronic submissions are encouraged).
>
>Important dates:
>Email submission of abstracts:          June 1, 1999
>Full paper submission:                  June 15, 1999
>Notification of acceptance/revision:    August 31, 1999
>Final revised versions of papers:       September 30, 1999
>Expected publication date:              January, 2000
>
>Guest Editors:
>
>Dr. A. Romanovsky
>Department of Computing Science
>University of Newcastle upon Tyne,
>Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU
>UK
>Email: [log in to unmask]
>
>Professor A.J. Wellings
>Department of Computer Science
>University of York
>Heslington
>York, YO10 5DD
>UK
>Email: [log in to unmask]
>