Focus Groups and Design Fest

All Focus Groups and Design Fests are scheduled in time slots different from the Writers Workshops. Thus it is possible to join a Writers Workshop track and actively participate in one long (six hour) and one short Focus Group or Design Fest.

Pattern Language Design Fest

The concept of a design fest is completely new for EuroPLoP™. The purpose of a design fest is for a group of people to join forces on working out a pattern language.
 
 
Design Fest Name Organizers Position Paper Schedule
Performance Pattern Language Klaus Marquardt required, due June 15th, 2001 3 hours on Saturday
Designing a Three-Tier Architecture Pattern Language Michael Kircher & Prashant Jain required, due May 19th, 2001  3 hours on Thursday and
3 hours on Friday

Performance Pattern Language

Every software engineer has used techniques to increase the execution speed of the system under development. Some of these techniques are purely technical, i.e. using a more efficient algorithm, others focus on correct distribution of tasks among different system parts, or on feature avoidance. Engineers working in different areas such as databases, embedded systems, or distributed systems, are used to apply specific techniques that are apparently different to techniques used in other domains. Nevertheless, I have found that these techniques parallel each other to a surprisingly high degree. There seem to be a number of Performance Patterns yet undiscovered.

The purpose of this Design Fest is to substantiate my claim by actually starting a Performance Pattern Language. We will explore what kind of patterns are known to us, how they relate each other, and what more patterns may be around. We will start a classification or taxonomy, sort the available patterns, and identify missing patterns by analogy. Finally we will start to write the actual patterns.

For more information see the Call for Papers for my Design Fest.

Submissions:
We got four position papers. All participants of the Performance Pattern Language design fest should read them in advance.
 
Andreas Rüping Rueping.zip
Klaus Marquardt Marquardt.zip
Christian von Mueffling Mueffling.zip
Ansgar Radermacher Radermacher.zip

Designing a Three-Tier Architecture Pattern Language

Three-tier applications have gained increasing acceptance and popularity in the software industry. They usually consist of a thin client providing presentation logic, a middle-tier containing the business logic, and a back-end database. While no two three-tier systems may be alike, they share similar requirements and consequently similar system designs.

It is the goal of this design fest to capture these similarities in the form of design patterns and to further integrate them into a pattern language. The net outcome of the design fest will be a pattern language that describes the fundamental architecture of a three-tier system. The design fest will be especially valuable to EuroPLoP participants who are system architects as well as software developers since the pattern language that will be formulated will be a very useful and effective means of documenting architectures of three-tier systems.

For more information see the Call for Papers.


 

Focus Groups

Focus groups are free format discussion groups. They don't have to deal with a specific pattern or pattern language, but bring up issues such as using patterns, organizing patterns, experience with patterns, etc. This year we can offer a variety of very interesting Focus Groups, all of which require some preparation in advance.
 
 
Focus Groups Organizers Position Paper Schedule
The Feyerabend Project - Redefining Computing Richard Gabriel required, due June 1st, 2001 3 hours on Thursday and
3 hours on Friday
Focus Group on Organizational Pattern Sequences James Coplien required, due June 15th, 2001 3 hours on Thursday and
3 hours on Friday
Merging Pattern Languages Joe Bergin & Markus Völter required, due June 15th, 2001 3 hours on Saturday
Patterns in the Pervasive World Daniel May required, due June 15th, 2001 3 hours on Saturday


 

The Feyerabend Project - Redefining Computing

Fifty years into the First Computing Era some in the computing arena have come to realize we've made a false start, and to finally be able to produce lasting, correct, beautiful, usable, scalable, enjoyable software that stands the tests of time and moral human endeavor, we need to start over. Perhaps we'll be able to salvage some of what we've learned from the First Era. Perhaps not.

This EuroPLoP Focus Group is the second in a short series of workshops that will work up to the initial starting place for a massive reinvention of computing. The way to think of this workshop is that we have experienced 50 years of computing all the way from machine language numerical computing to performing software on the Web in Java; and some of our tools, languages, processes, methodologies, and educational practices are suitable for and conducive to creating humane software, and some aren't. Now that we have a better idea of the kinds of software and systems we need to routinely build, the proper place of users in the design process, and what it takes to get software built, we need to take a look at what we do and how we do it in order to better match tools and processes to reality.

This is a brainstorming event - there will be about an hour of material with ideas for new programming languages and new educational practices, and after that we will work as a group to gather more ideas to start sketching the new landscape of computing.

To be invited to this focus group, please send a 1-paragraph description of your computing interests and expertises along with a 1 or 2 paragraph essay on your initial thoughts on how to approach this work to Richard P. Gabriel (rpg@dreamsongs.com) by June 1, 2001. A maximum of 20 people will be invited.

For more information about the Feyerabend Project and how to prepare, visit DreamSongs.

Focus Group on Organizational Pattern Sequences

Over the past several years, there has been a concerted effort to build pattern languages of organizational structure, such as can be found at http://www.bell-labs.com/cgi-user/OrgPatterns/OrgPatterns.  We have succeeded in congealing these patterns into a small number of nice pattern languages.  At this point, we want to "exercise" the pattern languages with sequences.  Sequences are an "architect's tour" of a system that visits elements of system structure in the order one would apply them as the system grows piecemeal.  They are stories structured to help the inexpert designer apply patterns in a sensical way. This workshop will bring together practitioners with their empirically based sequences of organizational growth.  The results of the workshop will be:

        - To refine the structure of the language (dependencies between patterns);
        - To refine the forces and context of the patterns themselves;
        - To perhaps identify missing patterns;
        - Others, as we identify them

This work relates to a book in progress on organizational patterns.

For more information please visit the call for participation at http://www.bell-labs.com/cgi-user/OrgPatterns/OrgPatterns?EuroPLoP2001FocusGroup.
Send replies and inquiries to cope@research.bell-labs.com.

Patterns in the Pervasive World

The vision of computing that we are moving towards is one where computational/informational capability will be around in most of the physical objects and space around us. We shall move from the perspective of computing "in the corner and on the desk" to our being submered in computing. It may be accurate to suggest that we are being embedded in a sea of computation, and it is also embedding itself within us. The pervasive world challenges our notion of modelling systems, organisations and people.

The focus group aims to discuss the following assertions:

The focus group will also explore possible patterns for pervasive habitats, as well as scenarios for the use of these in the pervasive world.

For more information see the Call for Papers.

Merging Pattern Languages

Over the past years, the work on patterns and pattern languages has matured. Starting with single patterns and pattern systems, pattern languages were written more frequently. In some domains, even several pattern languages are available. These pattern languages have certain commonalities, or "junction points" where they could be grouped together, to form "the" pattern language for the respective domain.

One such domain is pedagogy. The pedagogical pattern project (www.pedagogicalpatterns.org) has collected many patterns over the last years, and some pattern languages have been created, too. This domain could serve as an example for pattern languages that could be merged.

For more information see the Call for Papers.

The focus group reports of EuroPLoP™ 2001 will appear here after the conference.
 

Last Update: Thu 2001-April-12 20:00 Central European Time.