est. 1962, revised 1982, 1990
AIMS
To obtain a deeper understanding of programming
concepts in order to improve the quality of software by studying all aspects of
the software development process, both theoretical and practical.
SCOPE
The scope of the committee encompasses all aspects of
the software development process including the specification, design,
implementation and validation of software systems. Areas of present activity
are:
WG2.1 - Algorithmic Languages and Calculi
est.
1962, revised 1963, 1990, 1992
AIMS
To explore and evaluate new ideas in the field of
programming, possibly leading to the design of new languages.
SCOPE
· the study of calculation of programs from specifications;
· the design of notations for such calculations;
· the formulation of algorithm theories, using such notations;
· the investigation of software support for program derivation;
· continuing responsibility for ALGOL 60 and ALGOL 68.
WG2.2 - Formal Description of
Programming-Concepts
est.
1965, revised 1991
AIMS
The aim of the Working Group is to explicate
programming concepts through the development, examination and comparison of
various formal models of these concepts.
SCOPE
The Working Group will investigate formalisms and
models which represent different approaches to formal specification of
programming concepts. The models of concern must, at least in part:
· apply to the actual computing milieu;
· have sufficient generality to describe total systems or useful
subsystems;
· treat either:
- problem specification or
- solution specification;
· provide practical guides towards derivation of:
- capabilities,
- correctness,
- equivalence,
- implementability,
- performance;
· assist in standards development and specification;
· have
a pedagogical utility.
WG2.3 - Programming Methodology
est.
1969, revised 1991
AIMS
To increase programmers' ability to compose programs.
SCOPE
· identification of sources of difficulties encountered in present day
programming;
· the interdependence between the formulation of problems and the formulation
of programs, and the mapping of relations existing in the world of problems
into relations among programs and their components;
· intellectual disciplines and problem-solving techniques which can aid
programmers in the composition of programs;
· the problem of achieving program reliability;
· the consequences of requirements for program adaptability;
· the problem of probability of program correctness and its influence on
the structure of programs and on the process of their composition;
· guidelines for partitioning large programming tasks and defining the
interfaces between the parts;
· software
for mechanized assistance to program composition.
WG2.4 - Software Implementation Languages
est. 1973, revised 1991, 1992
AIMS
To promote the exchange of information between
researchers and users of languages for the description of software systems at
all stages of development and support. The particular focus of the group is
upon the pragmatic engineering aspects of the problem: measurements,
evaluation, critical comparisons, and development of economically viable
techniques.
SCOPE
· experience in the actual use of systems implementation languages;
· the relation of language design to the problems of system maintenance
and enhancement;
· impacts of programming methodology on system implementation languages;
· compilation techniques for system implementation languages;
· software and hardware environments to facilitate the design,
construction and maintenance of large software systems;
· software
portability and reusability, and their relationship to machine dependence.
WG2.5 - Numerical Software
est. 1974, revised 1991, 2006
AIMS
To improve the quality of scientific computation by
promoting the development and availability of sound numerical software.
SCOPE
1.
Environment. The definition from a
numerical standpoint of a set of hardware and software features for a computing
system.
2.
Tools. The development and improvement of
programming languages and other tools for numerical computation.
3.
Algorithms. The establishment of
guidelines for the assessment of numerical algorithms and their
implementations.
4.
Software. The establishment of
guidelines for the preparation, interoperability, verification, validation,
documentation, distribution and maintenance of numerical software.
5.
Data. The establishment of guidelines for
the validation, documentation, preservation, and distribution of numerical
data.
6.
Communication. The exchange of
information concerning numerical software and the determination of the needs of
computer users.
WG2.6 - Database
est.
1974, revised 1985, 1991, 1997
AIMS
For the benefit of society, to promote visibility and
to increase the impact of research and development in the database area,
especially in the fields defined in the scope of the working group.
· To promote quality and relevance of academic and industrial research and
development in the database area.
· To promote ethical behavior and appropriate recommendations or
guidelines for research related activities, e.g. submission and selection of
publications, organization of conferences, allocation of grants and awards, and
evaluation of professional merits and curricula.
· To promote cooperation between researchers and with other established
bodies and organizations pursuing the above aims.
· To contribute to assessing the scientific merits and practical relevance
of proposed approaches for data and knowledge management.
SCOPE
The notion of database has evolved to include systems
that accept, describe, store and enable manipulation and presentation of data,
information and knowledge in a wide spectrum of forms, ranging from tuples to
rules, text, images, sounds and others, with their corresponding operators,
usage and management.
The group's interests cover formalisms, models,
architectures, techniques and methodologies for the purpose of designing and
realizing such database systems.
These currently include in particular:
· new models, languages and theories for database design and
representation
· new architectures and techniques, e.g. data warehouses, data mining,
multimedia and spatio-temporal databases
· impact of new communication technologies, such as Internet, broadband
networks or wireless communications
· understanding, reuse and interoperation of existing data stores
· visual user interfaces and information visualization
· new methodologies for building database applications
WG2.7 - User Interface Engineering
est.
1975, revised 1987, 1991
AIMS
To investigate the nature, concepts and construction
of user interfaces for software systems.
SCOPE
· increase
understanding of the development of user interfaces based on knowledge of
system and user behaviour.
· provide a framework for reasoning about interactive systems;
· provide
an engineering model for the development of user interfaces.
WG2.8 - Functional Programming
est.
1987, revised 1991
AIMS
To study the design, implementation, and
use of functional (applicative) languages.
SCOPE
· semantic theories for functional languages;
· specification and correctness for functional programs;
· data and demand driven execution models;
· programming with higher-order functions;
· functional approaches to input-output and persistent memory;
· programming systems based on functional languages;
· novel architectures for functional programming systems;
· implementation based on combinator graph reduction;
· multiple processor implementations;
· programming styles and techniques appropriate for functional languages;
· applications and experience.
WG2.9 - Software Requirements Engineering)
est. 1993
AIMS
The aim of the Working Group is to develop a better
understanding of:
· the elicitation, specification, analysis and management of the
requirements for large and complex software intensive systems;
· the
interpretation and documentation of those requirements in such a way as to
permit the developer to construct a system which will satisfy them.
SCOPE
The Scope of the WG includes all aspects of
requirements engineering. Some examples of areas of special interest are:
· formal representation schemes and requirements modelling;
· descriptions of the requirements engineering process;
· tools and environments to support requirements engineering;
· requirements engineering methods;
· requirements analysis and validation;
· requirements elicitation, acquisition and formalisation;
· methods and tools for verification of implementations compliance with
requirements;
· reuse and adaptation of requirements;
· domain modelling and analysis;
· requirements engineering for distributed, safety-critical, composite,
real-time and embedded systems.
WG2.10 - Software Architecture
est. 2000
AIMS
The purpose of WG 2.10 is to further the practice of
software architecture by integrating software architecture research and
practice.
Software architecture is concerned with
· the structure and organization by which components and subsystems
interact to form systems, and
· the
properties of a system that can best be designed and analyzed at the system
level, for example end-to-end performance and system-family compatibility.
Software architecture is important because
· it captures and preserves designers' intentions about system structure,
thereby providing a defense against design decay as a system ages, and
· it
is the key to achieving intellectual control over the enormous complexity of a
sophisticated system.
Some of the concerns of a software architect are
· early analysis of critical whole-system properties and
· preservation of the integrity of design over time in the face of system modifications
and the creation of families of related systems.
SCOPE
The aspects of software architecture within the
working group's scope are:
· identifying common problems encountered by practitioners,
· investigating notations, languages, techniques, tools, and methodologies
for improving the practice of software architecture; current areas for
improvement are describing software architectures, supporting reuse at the
architectural level, interoperability and integration, evaluating and analyzing
software architectures (e.g. for fulfillment of requirements or properties,
comparing design alternatives, etc.), supporting the correspondence between the
architecture and the implementation, reverse-engineering the architecture of an
implemented system,
· training,
education, and certification of software architects.
WG2.11 – Program Generation
est. 2003
AIMS
Generative approaches have the potential to revolutionize software
development as automation and components revolutionized manufacturing.
At the same time, the abundancy of current research in this area
indicates that there is a host of technical problems both at the foundational
and
engineering levels. As such, the
aim of this Working Group of researchers and practitioners is to promote
progress in this area.
SCOPE
The scope of this WG includes the design, analysis, generation, and
quality control of generative programs and the programs that they generate.
Specific research themes include (but are not limited to the following
areas):
WG2.12/12.4 - Web Semantics
est. 2004, revised 2005
AIMS
The aim of the WG2.12 is to obtain a deeper
understanding of the semantic web, and help in the development of its theoretical
foundations and technological underpinning, as well as its impact on computing
in general.
SCOPE
The scope of the working-group includes:
· Study of the formal and practical knowledge representation issues of the
semantic web
· Provide input into developing standards for adding semantics to the web
and their enabling technologies
· Design, evaluation and use of ontologies
· Study of the semantics of agent and web interaction
· Issues related to the development, design and deployment of web services
particularly the impact of semantic aspects
· Metrics for evaluation of the quality of web semantics
· Studies of human centered aspects specifically for the semantic web
· Study of the impact of semantic web computing on organizations and
society
· Interoperability of data and Web Services including aspects of Trust and
Security
· Content-based information and knowledge retrieval
· Metadata and knowledge markup
· Information extraction, automatic and semi-automatic generation of meta
data
WG2.13 – Open Source Software
est. 2006
AIMS
To enable a diverse community of researchers and practitioners to
rigorously investigate the technology,
work practices, development processes, community dynamics within free, libre and open source software (OSS) systems, complementing
appropriately other IFIP Working Groups where OSS is increasingly relevant.
SCOPE
Software engineering
perspective
Studies of
Social science
perspective
External perspectives
& influences
WG2.14/6.12/8.10 – Service-Oriented
Systems
est. 2011, revised 2012
AIMS and SCOPE
The
new working group is proposed as a TC2, TC6, and TC8 initiative. Its goal
is to organize and promote the exchange of information on fundamental as well
as practical aspects of service-oriented systems. In doing so, the working
group will consider service-oriented systems from a technological perspective,
but it will also address their business aspects and economic impact. The aim
also is to structure a research community that comprises both academia and
industry (maybe through living labs) and become an active, permanent, and
international forum on services-oriented systems. Besides the technological
underpinnings, the working group will address the different facets of the
discipline. It will also try to organize current initiatives and research, and
propose suitable and sustainable future research directions.
WG2.15 – Verified Software
est. 2011
WG2.16 – Programming Language Design
est. 2012
AIM
To explore and evaluate new ideas in programming language design. Our
stance is that programming languages are foremost a medium for expressing the
structure and intention of software, and communicating these to other
programmers. As such human factors must weigh heavily in language design decisions,
requiring a well-judged balance between conflicting goals that are qualitative
in nature.
SCOPE