CALL FOR PAPERS 2nd International Workshop on Software Engineering for Large-Scale Multi-Agent Systems (SELMAS 2003) http://www.teccomm.les.inf.puc-rio.br/selmas2003 International Conference on Software Engineering 2003 http://cs.oregonstate.edu/icse2003/ May 3-4, 2003 Portland, Oregon, USA Advances in networking technology have revitalized the investigation of the agent technology as a promising paradigm to engineer complex distributed software systems. Nowadays, the agent technology has been applied in a wide range of application domains, including e-commerce, human-computer interfaces, telecommunications, and concurrent engineering. In general, software agents are viewed as complex objects with an attitude. Like objects, agents provide a specific set of services for their users. In fact, objects and agents exhibit points of similarity, but the development of multi-agent systems (MASs) poses other challenges to software engineering since software agents are inherently more complex abstractions. A single agent is driven by beliefs, goals, plans, and a number of behavioral properties such as autonomy, adaptation, interaction, collaboration, learning and mobility. Each of these features introduces additional complexity to the system modeling, design and implementation, and consequently, increases the probability of exceptional situation manifestation, security violations and so on. In addition, as the agent paradigm is devoted to the complex distributed system development, a large-scale MAS encompasses multiple types of agents, each of them having distinct agency properties, and it needs to satisfy multiple stringent requirements such as reliability, security, adaptability, interoperability, scalability, maintainability, and reusability. However, many existing agent-oriented solutions are far from ideal; in practice, they are often built in an ad-hoc manner and are error-prone, not scalable, and not generally applicable to large MAS. This workshop, aimed to discuss these issues, follows up on the success of the 1st Workshop on Software Engineering for Large-Scale Multi-Agent Systems (SELMAS’02), held in Orlando, USA, May 19, 2002, as part of the ICSE’02. The 1st SELMAS workshop was very successful due to the high quality of the submissions, the active participation of the audience, the exceptional profile of the panelists, and the current edition of a Springer book publishing refereed workshop papers. Research in multi-agent software engineering has been carried out according two different approaches: (i) agent-based software engineering, and (ii) object-oriented software engineering for MASs. Researchers following the first approach persuasively argue that multi-agent systems are often much more complex than object-oriented systems and hence the traditional object model generally fails to capture the complexity of multi-agent systems. In this approach, agents are a new abstraction that substitutes for the object abstraction realizing the agent abstraction as a new software engineering paradigm. As a result, proponents of this approach claim that it is necessary to develop new software engineering techniques, methods, and methodologies that are specifically tailored to agents. On the other hand, researchers adhering the second approach propose the integration of agents into the object-orientation world and, thus, they think of objects and agents as similar abstractions. As a result, their research has focused on using and extending the techniques existing in object-oriented software engineering, such as design patterns, frameworks, and modeling languages, to multi-agent software engineering. Goals The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners from both approaches to discuss the current state and future direction of research in software engineering for large-scale MASs. In addition, the workshop is a forum to learn about the latest research, and also discuss and exchange ideas concerning ongoing work. Particular interests of this workshop are: (i) Determine the overlap and integration of the two general research approaches for multi-agent software engineering; (ii) Understand those issues in the agent technology that difficult and/or improve the production of large-scale distributed systems; (iii) Provide a comprehensive overview of existing software engineering techniques that may successfully be applied to deal with the complexity associated with realistic multi-agent software. Scope. The workshop is intended to cover wide ranges of topics of software engineering for large-scale multi-agent systems, from theoretical foundations to empirical studies. We welcome the submission of papers in all aspects of agent-multi software engineering, including the following (but are not limited to): - Software engineering theories for large-scale MAS - Comparative studies between multi-agent systems and object-oriented systems - Pitfalls and learned lessons in the construction of large MAS - Experiments and case studies with large-scale MAS development - Advanced separation of concerns in the context of MAS - Design patterns, design principles, and architectural styles - Frameworks and software architectures - Reflective software architectures - Coordination architectures, infrastructures, and tools - Domain-specific languages for MAS - Requirements engineering for MAS - Software reliability engineering and MAS - Exception handling and fault-tolerance techniques - Mobility and security issues in large MAS - Software engineering techniques for resource-bounded MAS - MAS development and pervasive computing - Verification and validation techniques for MAS - Software development environments for real-life MAS - Modeling of large MAS - UML application to large-scale MAS - Methodologies for agent-oriented analysis and design - Testing and metrics for MAS How to Submit. Format and Submissions. The format of the workshop will combine short presentations and focused discussion groups. The number of participants will be between 40 and 50, and it will be restricted to authors of accepted papers and to a few invited guests. Prospective participants should submit electronically a position paper (between 5 and 8 pages) in PDF format to José Alberto Sardinha (sardinha@inf.puc-rio.br) by February 1, 2003. The format of submitted papers must follow the ICSE/ACM conference proceedings guidelines(http://cs.oregonstate.edu/icse2003/), including no page numbers. We encourage authors to present novel ideas, critique of existing work, and practical studies and experiments, which demonstrate how software engineering techniques can assist the development of large-scale multi-agent systems. Submission Due Dates. * Submission Date: February 1, 2003 * Accceptance/rejection: March 1, 2003 * Camera-ready Copy: April 1, 2003 Review Process. The submission of papers will be followed by a review process by the PC, with the final decision made by the Workshop Organizers. Organizing Committee. Jose Alberto R. P. Sardinha - Primary Contact PUC-Rio - Brazil (sardinha@inf.puc-rio.br) Alessandro Garcia PUC-Rio - Brazil (afgarcia@inf.puc-rio.br) Carlos Lucena PUC-Rio - Brazil (lucena@inf.puc-rio.br) Jaelson Castro Federal University of Pernambuco - Brazil (jbc@cin.ufpe.br) Alexander Romanovsky University of Newcastle upon Tyne - UK (alexander.romanovsky@ncl.ac.uk) Paulo Alencar University of Waterloo - Canada(palencar@csg.uwaterloo.ca) Donald Cowan University of Waterloo - Canada(dcowan@csg.uwaterloo.ca) Programme Committee (to be confirmed). - Mohamed Fayad (University of Nebraska - USA) - Mike Wooldridge (University of London - UK) - Ruy Milidiu (PUC-Rio - Brazil) - Paulo Alencar (University of Waterloo - Canada) - Donald Cowan (University of Waterloo - Canada) - Liz Kendall (Monash University - Australia) - Anand Tripathi (University of Minnesota - USA) - Cecilia Rubira (UNICAMP - Brazil) - Marcus Fontoura (IBM Almaden Research Center - USA) - Simon Stobart (University of Sunderland - UK) - Nick Jennings (Southampton University - UK) - James Odell (OMG) - Julio Leite (PUC-Rio - Brazil) - Ciaran Bryce (University of Geneve - Switzerland) - Gerhard Weiss (Technical University of Munich - Germany) - Van Parunak (Altarum Institute - USA) - Dan Marinescu (Central Florida University - USA) - Eric Yu (University of Toronto - Canada) - Marco Mamei (University of Modena & Reggio Emilia - Italy) - Martin Fredriksson (Blekinge Institute of Technology - Sweden) - Mark d'Inverno (University of Westminster - UK) - Awais Rashid (Lancaster University - UK) - Katia Sycara (Carnegie Mellon University - USA) - Gerd Wagner (Eindhonven University of Technology - The Netherlands) - Carlos Angel Iglesias Fernandez (Politechnical University of Madrid - Spain) - Martin Griss (HP Research Laboratory - USA) - Robert Kessler (University of Utah) - John Debenham (University of Technology, Sydeney, Australia) - Brian Henderson-Sellers (University of Technology, Sydeney, Australia) - Bernhard Bauer (Siemens) - Scott A. DeLoach (Kansas State University) - Paolo Giorgini (University of Trento) - Marie-Pierre Gleizes (Universite paul Sabatier, Toulouse) - Michael Huhns (University of South Carolina) - Catholijn Jonker (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) - David Kinny (University of Melbourne) - Yannis Labrou (Fujitsu Laboratories of America, Inc.) - Jean-Pierre Briot (Centre national de la recherche scientifique, France) - Michael Weiss (Carleton University) - Michael Stal (Siemens) - José Carlos Maldonado (USP, Brazil) - Markus Endler (PUC-Rio, Brazil) - Rogério de Lemos (The University of Kent, UK) - Danny Lange (Vocomo Software Corp) - Elisa Husita (Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Brazil) - Anna Perini (Istituto per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica, Italy) - Federico Bergenti (Universita` degli Studi di Parma, Italy) - Juergen Lind (AgentLab, Germany) - Olivier Gutknecht (France) - Marie-Pierre Gervais (Le Laboratoire d'Informatique de Paris 6, France) - Tom Maibaum (King's College London, UK) - Tom Holvoet (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium) - Luiz Cysneiros (York University, Canada) - Andrés Díaz Pace (UNCPBA University, Argentina) - Les Gasser (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA) - Gustavo Rossi (Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina)