From: nancyg@banshee..bellcore.com (Nancy Griffeth)
Newsgroups: news.announce.conferences
Subject: CFP Workshop on Feature Interactions in Telecommunications Systems
Keywords: telecommunications, artificial intelligence, specification, distributed systems, software engineering, open systems
Date: 8 Apr 92 20:55:07 GMT
Expires: Fri, 1 May 1992 07:00:00 GMT
Reply-To: nancyg@bellcore (Nancy Griffeth)
Distribution: news.announce.conferences
Organization: Bellcore MRE


			Call For Participation

	    INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON FEATURE INTERACTIONS
		IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS SOFTWARE SYSTEMS

	   St. Petersburg, Florida, USA, December 3-4, 1992


			     DESCRIPTION

This workshop is planned to encourage researchers from a variety of
computer science specialties (software engineering, protocol
engineering, distributed artificial intelligence, formal techniques,
and distributed systems, among others) to apply their techniques to
the feature interaction problem that arises in building
telecommunications software systems.

The feature interaction problem has been a major obstacle to the rapid
deployment of new telephone services. Telecommunications software is
huge, real-time, and distributed; adding new features to a
telecommunication system, like adding new functionalities to any large
software system, can be very difficult. Each new feature may interact
with many existing features, causing customer annoyance or total
system breakdown. Traditionally, interactions were detected and
resolved on a feature by feature basis by experts who are
knowledgeable on all existing features. As the number of features
grows to satisfy diverse needs of customers, managing feature
interactions in a single administrative domain is approaching
incomprehensible complexity. In a future marketplace where features
deployed in the network may be developed by different operating
companies and their associated vendors, the traditional approach is no
longer feasible. How to detect, resolve, or even prevent the
occurrence of feature interactions in an open network becomes an
important research issue.

The feature interaction problem is not unique to telecommunications
software; similar problems are encountered in any long-lived software
system that requires frequent changes and additions to its
functionality. Techniques in many related areas appear to be
applicable to the management of feature interactions. Software
methodologies for extensibility and compatibility, for example, could
be useful for providing a structured design that can prevent many
feature interactions from occurring. Formal specification,
verification, and testing techniques, being widely used in protocol
engineering and software engineering, contribute a lot to the
detection of interactions. Several causes of the problem, such as
aliasing, timing, and the distribution of software components, are
similar to issues in distributed systems. Cooperative problem solving,
a promising approach for resolving interactions at run time, resembles
distributed planning and resolution of conflicting subgoals among
multiple agents in the area of distributed artificial intelligence.
This workshop aims to provide an opportunity for participants to share
ideas and experiences in their respective fields, and to apply their
expertise to the feature interaction problem.

We welcome papers on preventing, detecting, and/or resolving feature
interactions using either analytical or structural approaches.
Submissions are encouraged in (but are not limited to) the following
topic areas:
      - Classification of feature interactions.
      - Modelling, reasoning, and testing techniques for detecting
        feature interactions.
      - Software platforms and architectures for preventing or
        resolving feature interactions.
      - Tools and methodologies for promoting software compatibility
        and extensibility.
      - Environments and automated tools for related problems in other
        software systems.

				FORMAT

We hope to promote a dialogue among researchers in various related
areas, as well as the designers and builders of telecommunications
software. To this end, the workshop will have sessions for paper
presentations, including relatively long discussion periods. Panel
discussions and a short tutorial on issues in the feature interaction
problem are being organized.

			      ATTENDANCE

Workshop attendance will be limited to 75 people. Attendance will be
by invitation only. Prospective attendees are asked to submit either a
paper (maximum 5000 words) or a single page description of their
interests and how they relate to the workshop. About 16--20 of the
attendees will be asked to present talks. We will strive for an equal
mix of theoretical results and practical experiences. A set of
working notes will be provided at the workshop. Papers with the
highest quality will be considered for publication in a special issue
or section of a research journal.

			     SUBMISSIONS

Please send five copies of your full original paper or interest
description to:
	Nancy Griffeth
	Bellcore, MRE 2L-237
	445 South Street
	Morristown, NJ 07962-1910, USA
	E-mail: nancyg@thumper.bellcore.com
	Tel: (201) 829-4538   Fax: (201) 829-5889

			   IMPORTANT DATES

 	1 June 1992: Submission of contributions.
      1 August 1992: Notification of acceptance.
  15 September 1992: Submission of camera-ready versions.

		       WORKSHOP CO-CHAIRPERSONS

	Nancy Griffeth (Bellcore, USA)
	Yow-Jian Lin (Bellcore, USA)

			  PROGRAM COMMITTEE

 chair: Hugo Velthuijsen (PTT, The Netherlands)

	E. Jane Cameron (Bellcore, USA)
	Steven Harris (BNR, Canada)
	Gerard J. Holzmann (AT&T Bell Laboratories, USA)
	Michael Huhns (MCC, USA)
	Luigi Logrippo (University of Ottawa, Canada)
	Harm Mulder (PTT, The Netherlands)
	Jan-Olof Nordenstam (ELLEMTEL, Sweden)
	David Notkin (University of Washington, USA)
	Akihiro Shimizu (NTT, Japan)
	Yasushi Wakahara (KDD R&D Laboratories, Japan)
	Pamela Zave (AT&T Bell Laboratories, USA)