QUALIFIER at ECSA 2024

Software architecture refers to the fundamental structures of a software system and the discipline of creating such structures and systems. Each structure comprises software elements, relations among them, and properties of both elements and relations. On the basis of such specification, it is possible to infer quality aspects of the software to be built, like performance, reliability, and maintainability. In fact, software architectures provide a valuable opportunity to assess and drive software quality from the early stages of software development, as well as later on, during software evolution.

The objectives of this workshop are to bring together researchers and industrial practitioners both from the software architecture and the wider software engineering communities to collaborate, share experiences, provide directions for future research, and to encourage the use of quality assessment techniques in any stage of the software engineering lifecycle.

Accepted papers

Nils Johansson, Mauro Caporuscio, and Tobias Olsson
“Mapping source code to software architecture by leveraging Large Language Models”

Sahar Ahmadisakha and Vasilios Andrikopoulos
“Mining for sustainability in cloud architecture among the discussions of software practitioners: building a dataset”

Pablo Cruz and Hernán Astudillo
“Positive Side-Effects of Evaluating a Software Architecture”

Program

Times are in CEST (UTC+2)

09:00 - 09:15	Welcome - Workshop Opening
09:15 - 10:15	Keynote: Jacopo Soldani, University of Pisa, Italy
10:15 - 10:30	Discussion
10:30 - 11:00	Coffee Break
11:00 - 11:25	Paper: Mapping source code to software architecture by leveraging Large Language Models
11:25 - 11:50	Paper: Mining for sustainability in cloud architecture among the discussions of software practitioners: building a dataset
11:50 - 12:15	Paper: Positive Side-Effects of Evaluating a Software Architecture
12:15 - 12:30	Closing

Keynote

Jacopo Soldani, University of Pisa, Italy

Title: “Freshening Microservices: Can Bad Smells Be Resolved?”

Abstract: Microservices are pervading the IT industry to architect enterprise applications. Consequently, it is crucial to support the design and analysis of microservice applications, to ensure that they met their expectations. This support includes verifying the adherence to the key design/security principles for microservices, and guiding the necessary refactorings when this is not the case. In this keynote, we unveil the concepts of architectural and security smells for microservices, demonstrating how these can be identified and resolved within existing microservice applications. We also provide insights into prioritising smell resolution and assessing whether resolving a smell is truly beneficial, considering the impact on overall software quality attributes.

Bio: Jacopo Soldani is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Pisa (Italy). He received the PhD degree in Computer Science in 2017 from the University of Pisa (Italy). His research interests lie in the area of service-based software engineering, including, e.g., cloud-native applications, microservices, and multi-service software architectures. He is also interested in systematic approaches to elicit the state-of-the-art and state-of-practice in software engineering from both white and grey literature. Jacopo has been involved in various research projects on service-based software engineering for cloud- and fog-based applications, he is member of the editorial board of internationally renowned journals, and he has also contributed to the organisation of various editions of international conferences and workshops on software engineering.

Call for papers

Themes and goals

Software architecture is a high-level abstraction of the system that, in stage-gate software development processes, provides a blueprint and directs implementation, balances various and potentially conflicting stakeholder concerns, and is influenced by high-level product requirements and business goals. For these reasons, software architectures must be of “high quality” due to their function. Quality itself is a broad concept with several meanings. For example, maintenance and performance are two quality properties that cover two distinct but related aspects of the same architecture. Therefore, we foster connecting researchers and practitioners to exchange knowledge on quality estimation in software architectures. Real-world contexts could benefit from the usage of software architectures, which in-turn could ease quality analysis of complex software systems.

Topics include, but are not limited to

• Quantifiable models and metrics for SA quality
• Interplay and trade-offs among quality properties
• Refactoring and evolution of SA for quality
• Automated optimization of SA with respect to quality properties
• Quality of learning-based SA
• Requirements engineering for SA quality assurance
• Graphical visualization of quality properties of SA
• User studies on quality aspects and quality assurance practices in SA
• Datasets to benchmark quality assessment techniques for SA
• Human-in-the-loop for the assessment and improvement of SA quality
• Scalability and capacity planning
• Quality-driven cloud computing and edge-cloud architectures
• Quality aspects in microservices-based architectures
• AI/ML techniques for SA quality
• Software architectures and human quality of experience
• Quality attributes for the Internet of Things and cyber-physical systems architectures
• Quality-oriented industrial software systems (such as I4.0 and I5.0)
• Any other topic related to quality in SA

Submission

QUALIFIER seeks contributions in the form of:

• 16 pages for full research papers;
• minimum 8 pages, up to 12, for new ideas and emerging results, vision paper, and short research;
• 2 pages for extended abstract (presentation only - NO PROCEEDINGS)

All contributions must be formatted according to the Springer LNCS style. Page limits include figures and references. Contributions need to be submitted in PDF format via EasyChair to ECSA 2024. Please select the “3rd International Workshop on Quality in Software Architecture” in EasyChair for your submission and click “Continue”.

Papers follow a single-blinded reviewing process and must contain original unpublished work, describe significant novel contributions, and provide evidence about the validation of the results. Papers will undergo a single review process (no additional review round for post-proceedings).

The proceedings will be published by Springer as part of the LNCS series.

Organizing Committee

• Daniele Di Pompeo, SPENCER Lab, University of L’Aquila
• Michele Tucci, SPENCER Lab, University of L’Aquila

Program Committee

• Nour Ali - Brunel University London, UK
• Jan Bosch - Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
• Giordano d’Aloisio - University of L’Aquila, Italy
• Sebastian Frank - University of Stuttgart, Germany
• Giovanni Quattrocchi - Politecnico di Milano, Italy
• António Rito Silva - Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
• Jacopo Soldani - University of Pisa, Italy

Important dates

(All deadlines are 23:59, Anywhere on Earth)

• Paper submission: June 6, 2024 June 17, 2024
• Paper notification: July 4, 2024
• Camera-ready version: July 11, 2024
• Workshop dates: September 2 or 3, 2024

Contact

For any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at: ecsa_qualifier2024@easychair.org