AIMS & SCOPE

Building on the success of the thirtheen previous editions (1998-2011), a special track on coordination models, languages and applications will be held at SAC 2012. Over the last decade, we have witnessed the emergence of models, formalisms and mechanisms to describe concurrent and distributed computations and systems based on the concept of coordination. The purpose of a coordination model is to enable the integration of a number of possibly heterogeneous components (processes, objects, agents) in such a way that the resulting ensemble can execute as a whole, forming a software system with desired characteristics and functionalities which possibly takes advantage of parallel and distributed systems. The coordination paradigm is closely related to other contemporary software engineering approaches such as multi-agent systems, service-oriented architectures, component-based systems and related middleware platforms. Furthermore, the concept of coordination exists in many other Computer Science areas such as workflow systems, cooperative information systems, distributed artificial intelligence, and Internet technologies.

After more than a decade of research, the coordination paradigm is gaining increased momentum in state-of-the-art engineering paradigms such as multi-agent systems and service-oriented architectures: in the first case, coordination abstractions are perceived as essential to design and support the working activities of agent societies; in the latter case, service coordination, orchestration, and choreography are going to be essential aspects of the next generations of systems based on Web services.

The Special Track on Coordination Models, Languages and Applications takes a deliberately broad view of what constitutes coordination. Accordingly, major topics of interest this year will include:

• Novel models, languages, programming and implementation techniques
• Applications
• Internet, Web, and pervasive computing coordinated systems
• Coordination of multi-agent systems, including mobile agents, intelligent agents, and agent-based simulations
• Languages for service description and composition
• Models, frameworks and tools for Group Decision Making
• All aspects related to Cooperative Information Systems (e.g. workflow management, CSCW)
• Software architectures and software engineering techniques
• Configuration and Architecture Description Languages
• Middleware platforms
• Self-organising and nature-inspired coordination approaches
• Coordination technologies, systems and infrastructures
• Relationship with other computational models such as object oriented, declarative (functional, logic, constraint) programming or their extensions with coordination capabilities
• Formal aspects (semantics, reasoning, verification)
• Coordination models and specification in Service-Oriented Architectures, Web Service technologies (orchestration, choreography, etc), and Pervasive Computing

PROCEEDINGS

Papers accepted for the Special Track on Coordination Models, Languages and Applications will be published by ACM both in the SAC 2012 proceedings and in the Digital Library.

PAPER SUBMISSION AND FORMAT

All papers should represent original and previously unpublished works that currently are not under review in any conference or journal.

The author(s) name(s) and address(es) must NOT appear in the body of the paper, and self-reference should be in the third person. This is to facilitate blind review. Only the title should be shown at the first page without the author's information.

Submitted papers must be no longer than 6 pages and in the ACM two-column page format (doc template, pdf template, latex template). It will be possible to have up to 2 extra pages in the proceeding at a charge of $80 per page (total 8 pages maximum).

Poster Sessions: papers that received high reviews (that is acceptable by reviewer standards) but were not accepted due to space limitation can be invited for the poster session. Poster should be not longer than 2 pages plus 1 extra page at $80. The poster session procedures and details will be posted on SAC 2012 website as soon as they become available.

Submission is entirely automated via the STAR Submission System, which is available from the main SAC Web Site: http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2012/.