sss ssss rrrrrrrrrrr ssss ss rrrr rrrr sssss s rrrr rrrr ssssss rrrr rrrr ssssssss rrrr rrrr ssssss rrrrrrrrr s ssssss rrrr rrrr ss sssss rrrr rrrr sss sssss rrrr rrrr s sssssss rrrrr rrrrr +===================================================+ +======= Quality Techniques Newsletter =======+ +======= September 2005 =======+ +===================================================+ QUALITY TECHNIQUES NEWSLETTER (QTN) is E-mailed monthly to subscribers worldwide to support the Software Research, Inc. (SR), eValid, and TestWorks user communities and to other interested parties to provide information of general use to the worldwide internet and software quality and testing community. Permission to copy and/or re-distribute is granted, and secondary circulation is encouraged, provided that the entire QTN document/file is kept intact and this complete copyright notice appears in all copies. Information on how to subscribe or unsubscribe is at the end of this issue. (c) Copyright 2004 by Software Research, Inc. ======================================================================== Contents of This Issue o Workshop on High Assurance Systems (RHAS'05) o About the French Testing Board o eValid General Description and Main Feature Summary o Special Issue of the International Journal of Web Services Research on Services Engineering o eValid Success Story Summaries o Understanding the Social Side of Software Engineering: Special Issue of the Information and Software Technology Journal o Project Failure Prevention, by Tom Gilb o Public eValid Training Course Schedule o Special Issue of Journal of Systems and Software: Component- Based Software Engineering of Trustworthy Systems o Special Issue of ACM Transactions on Internet Technology: Middleware for Service-Oriented Computing o QTN Article Submittal, Subscription Information ======================================================================== Fifth International Workshop on Requirements for High Assurance Systems (RHAS'05 - Chicago) held in conjunction with the The Sixteenth International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE'2006) <http://www.sei.cmu.edu/community/rhas-workshop/> The Fifth International Requirements Engineering for High-Assurance Systems Workshop (RHAS05 - Chicago) is a one day workshop that addresses the special challenges of engineering the requirements of software-intensive systems, the performance and dependability of which are both mission critical. For such systems, it is thus critically important that requirements engineers collaborate with specialty engineers to proper engineer both: * Performance requirements (e.g., jitter, latency, response time, schedulability, and throughput) * Dependability requirements (e.g., defensibility, operational availability, predictability, reliability, robustness, safety, security, stability, and survivability) Position papers will be submitted and reviewed prior to the conference, and published for the conference if accepted. During the morning of the workshops, authors of accepted position papers will present a brief summary of their papers. During the afternoon of the workshop, the attendees will work in a collaborative setting to: * Identify and explore important challenges and risks * Propose, formulate, and evaluate promising solutions WORKSHOP GOALS To bring together in a small focused working group practitioners, consultants, and researchers to: * Exchange ideas and their experiences concerning the engineering of performance and dependability requirements * Identify and explore important challenges and risks * Propose, formulate, and evaluate promising solutions * Identify open research problems TOPICS OF INTEREST Requested topics for position papers include but are not restricted to: * Practical ways to quantify, verify, and validate performance and dependability requirements * Turning soft goals into hard requirements * Relationships between reliability and other quality requirements * Making engineering trade-offs between competing quality requirements * Appropriate tools and techniques for the elicitation, analysis, specification, evaluation, reuse, and management of these critical requirements for high-assurance systems * The role of formal requirements specification when engineering high-assurance systems * The relationship between system and software requirements including how to properly derive critical software quality requirements when engineering high-assurance requirements. ======================================================================== About the French Testing Board http://france.istqb.org/ The French Testing Board was founded in 2004. The board works out the syllabus and examination questions. At the moment, the board consists of members (see below). These people all work on a voluntary basis on the board. All do either already have experience on the Testing Board of another country, are specialists in the field of testing or have been working on an international standard for the testing of software for a while. Chairman of the board is Bernard Homes. Board Members Bernard Homes: Speaker and member of IEEE Jacques Printz: Professor CNAM, Software Development Fabrice Grimbert: Technical Manager Eurogiciel Jean-Pierre Imbert: CEO JPI Conseil, Member of French Normalization Board AFNOR Stephan Hostie: consultant Synspace Olivier DiGiorgio: CEO Softexperior Robert Treffny: CEO iSQI ======================================================================== eValid General Description and Main Feature Summary evalid is built with a web testing technology that makes it very easy to use and very accurate when testing web browser enabled applications. Here is a short summary: http://www.soft.com/eValid/general.summary.html eValid Offers Distinct Advantages There is a significant difference between systems that are based on using HTTP/S activity vs. eValid's full-browser technology, as described here: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Technology/why.browser.html We have very high confidence in eValid's ability to play back tests of ANY website, and we even have a 100% guarantee of this: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Promotion/guarantee.html eValid has been used in a variety of ways on customer projects, and we are very proud of the success stories that have resulted: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Promotion/SuccessStories/summary.html eValid Provides Superior Record/Play Regression Testing Support We believe eValid's GUI is very easy to use. And, somewhat as a "tongue in cheek" comment, we even have a "management-level 30- minute test" which we think eValid passes quite handily: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Promotion/Blurbs/thirty.minute.test.html Here is how eValid handles secure data ID fields when the are used to maintain context in a secure session: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Technical/script.html#SecureDataID Here is the complete description of eValid's validation modes: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Testing/validation.html Flash objects are "opaque" to eValid -- none of the internal structure is visible to the outside. Because Flash objects are opaque they often present record/play difficulty, but they can be tested quite reliably with some care. For details see: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Advanced.Testing/flash.cookbook.html Testing of Java applets within eValid is complicated by the fact that, to the eValid browser, an applet appears as an opaque object. eValid has special applet processing and support commands, described in more detail here: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Settings/miscellaneous.recording.html http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Technical/script.html#Applet Adaptive playback, a unique feature of eValid that adaptively figures out how to behave correctly, even when the underlying page changes, is described at: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Advanced.Testing/adaptive.playback.html There is a built-in capability to pre-specify values for parameters in an eValid script, described in detail here: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Technical/environment.variables.html LoadTest Runs Build on Functional Tests Also, in trying to squeeze the absolute most out of a machine that is being used for load testing, you may want to consider some or all of the suggestions given at: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Loading/supplemental.html The eValid LoadTest system has a powerful Scenario Editor that makes the process of lifting functional tests into sophisticated server loading scenarios involving multiple users. See the description at: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Loading/scenario.edit.html The Infinite User Key (IUK) is a procedure used to apply eValid LoadTest scenarios to an unlimited number of machines for a fixed time period. See the details at: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Loading/infinite.user.html eValid load tests, run multiple browsers, and how many you can get to run at one time is a function of a number of factors, the primary one being available RAM. Here are some results of some calibration benchmarks: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Loading/calibration.html eValid includes a special load testing support utility called eVlite, which reads eValid scripts and generates non-coherent HTTP activity. See the details about eVlite at: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Loading/evlite.html We offer budget-priced server loading projects that help you optimize server capabilities using 100% realistic tests. See: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Services/PerformanceTest/summary.html eValid Has a Variety of Support Subsystems eValid has ~60 switches that control executions from the Windows command line, described here: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Technical/interface.html eValid has a powerful interactive interface that effectively makes the entire eValid script language into the programmatic interface, as described in detail in this page: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Interactive/interactive.mode.html Regression test management is done from the eV.Manager component, which can run 1000's of tests automatically, as described here: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Manager/summary.html eValid has a powerful test data generator which will let you try large and complex datasets in sequential or random mode, as described here: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Generate/summary.html eValid has a powerful Data Synthesis capability that lets you run complex tests for large numbers of combinations of data, described here: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Documentation.5/Generate/synthesize.data.html We have support for ASPs that will keep your costs down to a very low level, described in: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/License/Commercial/asp.support.html There are many license access options available with eValid, as described in these two pages: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/License/licensing.options.html http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/License/access.options.html Commercial List Prices for the entire eValid product line are found at: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/bundle.pricelist.5.html http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/feature.pricelist.5.html Here is the special server loading prices list that extends the regular Server Loading Bundle to either a multiple set of 1-week IUKs or continuous multi-machine playbacks: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/loading.pricelist.5.html Details on eValid Maintenance Subscriptions can be found at: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/maintenance.subscription.html You can download an evaluation copy of eValid from: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Products/Download.5/down.evalid.5.phtml?status=FORM ======================================================================== Call for Papers on Services Engineering Special Issue of the International Journal of Web Services Research (JWSR) http://www.cs.ust.hk/~scc/ijwsr.html GUEST EDITORS S.C. Cheung (scc@cs.ust.hk) The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Jun Han (jhan@ict.swin.edu.au) Swinburne University of Technology CALL FOR PAPERS With recent advances in network technologies and infrastructure, there is increasing demand for ubiquitous access to networked services. New challenges arise in the study of services engineering, an emerging research area devoted to the software engineering of service-oriented applications. Services Engineering is an important area of the Services Computing Discipline, as promoted by the IEEE Computer Society. Its goal is to formulate effective solutions to the quality development, deployment and management of these applications. The first International Workshop on Services Engineering (SEIW 2005) will be held at Melbourne in September 2005. This special issue aims to succeed the workshop and present the latest original research results or industrial experience in Services Engineering. Topics of interest include, but not limited to, the following. Mathematical foundation of services engineering Service oriented architecture Services interoperability Services for ubiquitous applications Requirements engineering for services computing applications Design methodologies for services engineering Model driven architecture for services engineering Analysis and design patterns for services Refactorization of services Services verification and validation Services testing Quality of services and deployment issues Resource management for services computing Service oriented business process integration and management Dependability of services Survivability and reliability of services engineering Trust, security and privacy of services engineering Agent technologies for services engineering Context awareness and management Ontological and semantic matching of services Services engineering life cycle Evaluation and experimentation of services engineering Industrial case studies ======================================================================== eValid Success Story Summaries eValid's browser-based technology for analyzing and testing websites has helped hundreds of customers achieve new levels of accuracy and repeatability in their web applications. Here is a sampling of success stories about how eValid has helped customers in novel and unusual ways. o Remote Measurement & Reporting: A popular auction website used a specially packaged version of eValid to remote-capture detailed user behavior data. The eValid package was deployed to 1000's of field computers to obtain detailed end-user measurement of response time and performance data of how quickly the site behaved in a battery of two dozen separate tests. o Remote Loading: Using eValid developed functional tests and a battery of DSL-based test machines, eValid LoadTests were able to overload the website of a well known document storage and manipulation website and identify major system bottlenecks. o Download Timing: A major gaming company used eValid functional test monitoring services to analyze the time customers need to download their medium-sized (10 MByte) application. After several months they were able to make server adjustments that decreased total download times and minimized the variance in performance their users has o Production Monitoring: A commercial monitoring firm uses eValid transactions on commercial basis to protect customers' website investment by assuring availability and response time. The service applies 1000's of plays per day -- over 2 million tests per year -- using multiple machines and multiple levels of sophistication. o Search Timing: eValid scripts were used to establish actual "below the fold" timing data for a popular web search engine. After analysis of many weeks of data the customer made changes in their site structure that significantly improved response times and result customer success rates. o Three-Tier Monitoring: A well known e-commerce site uses eValid script-based three-tier transaction monitoring to assure compliance with a minimum performance criteria ("a simulated user has to be able to complete a transaction in less than 120 seconds"). o Site Comparison: On behalf of a European financial news journal, eValid website comparisons were done of 150 different financial institution websites. The detailed data developed in the eValid scans of these websites was used to characterize likely user website satisfaction in terms of response time, quality and integrity of links, and other matters. o VPN Appliance Testing: A manufacturer of a Virtual Private Network appliance has been using eValid to generate large amounts of web browsing traffic to confirm the quality and reliability of their equipment when applied in "real world" usage. o Monitoring Integration: eValid has been integrated into a well-known system monitoring system to provide transaction oriented checking and timing support in addition to standard forms of network status reporting. Dozens of customers are experiencing increased quality of service (QOS) with this combined analyzing and reporting technology. been noting. o Custom Browser Development: A firm involved in developing a sophisticated network monitoring system needed a customer browser to incorporate in their product. eValid built a special version for them, branded to their specification and dressed with their logos. The eValid-built browser component of their product enhanced the value of their business and helped them attract a profitable merger with a much-larger monitoring firm. For complete details on all of these success stories please see the complete explanations reachable from: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Promotion/SuccessStories/summary.html ======================================================================== Understanding the Social Side of Software Engineering Qualitative Software Engineering Research Special Issue of the Information and Software Technology Journal http://www.itu.dk/people/ydi/QSER-Cfp.pdf Software engineering is a social activity. To better understand the social side of software development, the software engineering community has been discussing the use of qualitative methods from the social sciences to complement quantitative research approaches. Though a number of workshops have been held, e.g., in conjunction with the International Conferences on Software Engineering (http://bigfoot.uib.no/HSSE, http://www.cs.uvic.ca/ icse2000/ ), relevant research is scattered. Contributions are published in a number of research communities in addition to Software Engineering, e.g., Information Systems and Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Taking the number of publications in the different communities in consideration, it indicates a rich body of ongoing research in the area. This special issue is meant to provide an overview of the state of the art of qualitative software engineering research. We especially invite articles presenting concrete case studies that can illustrate how the above-mentioned methodological challenges can be addressed. The choice of method and the concrete experience with the chosen approach should be reflected upon. We plan to provide an introduction into the existing research and the specific challenges of qualitative software engineering research. Guest Editors Yvonne Dittrich, corresponding guest editor ydi@itu.dk ITU of Copenhagen, Denmark http://www.itu.dk/people/ydi/ Michael John michael.john@first.fraunhofer.de Frauenhofer Institute in Berlin, Germany http://www.first.fraunhofer.de/ Janice Singer Janice.Singer@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca National Research Council Canada http://iit-iti.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/personnel/singer_janice_e.html Bjornar Tessem Bjornar.Tessem@infomedia.uib.no University of Bergen, Norway, http://www.uib.no/People/sinbt/ ======================================================================== Project Failure Prevention by Tom Gilb www.gilb.com It is now well known and well documented that far too many projects fail totally or partially, both in engineering generally and in software engineering. As an international consultant for decades, involved in a wide range of projects and involved in saving "almost failed" projects, my basic premises are that we both get our requirements wrong and we do not focus our design energy and project management energy on meeting a clear correct set of project requirements. We can summarize project control by the following set of principles: 1. The critical few product objectives of the project need to be stated measurably. 2. The project team must be rewarded to the degree they achieve these critical project objectives. 3. There must be a top-level architecture process that focuses on finding and specifying appropriate design strategies for enabling us to meet the critical product performance levels on time. 4. Project specifications should not be polluted with dozens of unclear terms per page; there needs to be a specification quality control, =20= and an exit at less than one major defect remaining per page. 5. Design review must be based on a clean specification, and should be focused on whether designs meet their multiple requirements. 6. The high-risk strategies need to be validated early, or swapped with better ones. 7. Adequate resources need to be allocated to deliver the design strategies. 8. The stakeholder value should be delivered early, proven, and continuously. If you run out of resource unexpectedly, then most value should be delivered already. 9. The requirements should not put unnecessary constraints on the delivery of performance and consequent value. 10. The project should be free to give priority to value delivery, and not be constrained by well-intended processes and standards. There was a time when software and IT were "Wild West." Anybody who could program did things as they knew best. In many places, we are not far off from that model today. But in other places, the need to get higher consistent standards of professionalism has swung the pendulum too far the other way. Things like CMMI (see http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/) are thorough and well intended, but almost no such recommended frameworks and processes encourage or permit focus on the main results of a project. Consequently, there is a great, inevitable danger that this results focus will be lost in =20 practice. Everywhere I look, I see that result -- no results focus -- with or =20 without the distraction of CMMI and the like. This includes the agile methods. My own attempt to refocus is simple: "A Simple Evolutionary Project Management Method Project Process Description": 1. Gather from all the key stakeholders the top few (5 to 20) most critical performance (including qualities and savings) goals that the project needs to deliver. Give each goal a reference name (a tag). 2. For each goal, define a scale of measure and a "final" goal level. For example: Reliability: Scale: Mean Time Between Failure, Goal: > 1 month. 3. Define approximately four budgets for your most limited resources (for example, time, people, money, and equipment). 4. Write up these plans for the goals and budgets (try to ensure this is kept to only one page). 5. Negotiate with the key stakeholders to formally agree on the goals and budgets. 6. Plan to deliver some benefit (that is, progress toward the goals) in weekly (or shorter) increments (Evo steps). 7. Implement the project in Evo steps. Report to project sponsors after each Evo step (weekly or shorter) with your best available estimates or measures, for each performance goal and each resource budget. * On a single page, summarize the progress to date toward achieving the goals and the costs incurred. * Based on numeric feedback and stakeholder feedback, change whatever needs to be changed to reach goals. 8. When all goals are reached, claim success and move on. Free the remaining resources for more profitable ventures. [For more details, see the author's just-published book *Competitive Engineering: A Handbook for Systems Engineering, Requirements Engineering, Software Engineering Using Planguage*. The book was released in the UK on 15 July and is available in the US. for free delivery to Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, enter code AFU4 in the "offer" box at: http://books.elsevier.com/engineering?isbn=3D0750665076. Tom Gilb ---------- tom@gilb.com, www.gilb.com +47 920 66 705 (SMS MMS Mobile) ======================================================================== Public eValid Training Course Schedule ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The next public eValid training courses in San Francisco have been scheduled. Space for these events is limited so reserve your seat early. o Wednesday, Thursday, Friday: 14-16 December 2005 o Wednesday, Thursday, Friday: 22-24 February 2005 Options for 1-day and 2-day versions are possible. The complete curriculum for these training sessions can be seen at: http://www.soft.com/eValid/Training/curriculum.html ======================================================================== Elsevier Journal of Systems and Software - Special Issue COMPONENT-BASED SOFTWARE ENGINEERING OF TRUSTWORTHY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~hws/cgi-bin/JSS-CBSE/ Deadline: 15 December 2005 BACKGROUND With the continuing miniaturization, integration and globalization of information and communication technologies (ICT), embedded computing systems (electronics and software) are becoming pervasive. Embedded computing systems are the fastest growing sector in ICT today. Business, science, engineering, health and government services and processes are critically relying on distributed embedded real-time systems with ICT components adding direct business value in a wide variety of application domains, such as collaborative and agile processes (for example in emergency services, aerospace projects or financial markets); equipment control (for plants, hospitals, synchrotrons or telescopes, say); automation (such as in utilities and advanced manufacturing); sensor networks (for adhoc networks, diagnostics, environmental management or defense, for example); asset tracking (for instance in transport and defense); and last but not least, national security (e.g., in defense and government). Over the past decade or so, component-based (CB) software engineering has become a key enabler for this transformation. Its CB models, methods, middleware, languages and tools mirror physical component architectures and/or virtualize them and assist in controlling their inherent processes, in a world of software artifacts, products and product lines. They blur the boundaries between hardware and software by permitting hierarchies and networks of hybrid component abstractions, defined for example in industry design standards such as UML2, OSA, IEC61131 and IEC61499, and in widely used software technologies such as Microsoft's .NET or Sun Microsystem's JavaTM to mention just a few. The flexibility of software solutions, their capability of abstracting from the heterogeneity of the underlying hardware devices and operating systems services, and, last but not least, their lower production and management cost is also gradually shifting the boundary between hardware and software. Increasingly, distributed embedded computing systems become software-intensive and shift the balance of cost more and more from hardware to software in planning, development and maintenance. TOPICS Across all social and economic sectors, modern society depends critically on CB software engineering of such embedded and pervasive real-time systems. While CB technologies provide many advantages they still meet many challenges that are characteristic for distributed embedded systems (for example resource utilizations, real-time requirements, high-availability, reliability, robustness, safety, privacy, security etc.). The software engineering community therefore aims increasingly at trustworthy and dependable CB systems. This JSS special issue on Component-Based Software Engineering of Trustworthy Embedded Systems aims to address this critical issue. We invite articles on open problems, leading-edge research and state-of-the-art solutions. The Elsevier Journal of Systems and Software seeks to bridge theory and practice. Both theoretical and practical articles are encouraged for this special issue. However, theoretical articles must include some empirical evaluation, practical demonstration, or substantive discussion of the practical application of the proposed idea. Topics of interest include: * Modeling and prediction of extra-functional properties (safety, reliability, time, privacy, trust etc.) of component-based embedded and pervasive software systems * Component-based resource allocation and utilization models (scheduling, storage, cost etc.) for embedded and pervasive real-time software * Fault-tolerance and recovery awareness in distributed component- based software-intensive systems * Rich component-based design of distributed real-time infrastructures with predictable properties and verifiable configurations * Design automation and automated management of component-based distributed real-time systems * Model-checking and dynamic monitoring of component-based distributed and embedded systems * Dynamic reconfiguration, adaptation and self-organization of component-based embedded and pervasive systems All papers will be subject to a thorough peer review process. Guest Editors: Ivica Crnkovic, Mdlardalen University, Vdsteres (Sweden), George T. Heineman, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester (USA), Heinz Schmidt, Monash University, Melbourne (Australia), Judith Stafford, Tufts University, Boston (USA), Kurt Wallnau, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (USA) Editor-in-Chief: David Card ======================================================================== ACM Transactions on Internet Technology Special Issue on Middleware for Service-Oriented Computing http://snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca/~qmahmoud/soa-middleware-cfp.pdf Middleware is a distributed software layer that sits above the network operating system and below the application layer and abstracts the heterogeneity of the underlying environment. It provides an integrated distributed environment whose objective is to simplify the task of programming and managing distributed applications, and to provide value-added services such as naming and transactions to enable easier development and integration of applications and services. Middleware is about integration and interoperability of applications and services running on heterogeneous computing and communications devices. The role of middleware will continue to become increasingly important especially in emerging technologies such as mobile- and service-oriented computing and web services, where the integration of different applications and services from different wired and wireless businesses and service providers become increasingly important. Service-oriented computing is based on the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), which is an architectural style for building software applications that use services available in a network such as the web. It promotes loose coupling between software components so that they can be reused. Applications in SOA are built based on services, which is an implementation of a well-define business functionality, and such services can be consumed by clients in different applications or business processes. SOA provides a level of flexibility that was not possible before in the sense that services are software components with well-defined interfaces that are implementation independent, that services can be dynamically discovered, and composite services can be built from aggregates of other services. Especially applications running on mobile devices can benefit from the flexibility which is provided by SOA. All those benefits, however, raise challenges that need to be addressed by middleware. Middleware will play an essential role in managing and provisioning service-oriented applications. As a result, middleware will be everywhere! The aim of this special issue is be to present most recent research findings on middleware for service-oriented computing. We are seeking papers that are original, unpublished and not currently under review by workshops, conferences, or other journals. Possible topics include, but are not limited to the following: Middleware for selection and interaction among services Middleware for dynamic selection and composition of services/applications Middleware for dynamic coordination of services/applications Middleware for context-aware services/applications Middleware for managing services/applications Middleware for provisioning QoS- enabled services/applications Middleware for interoperable services Performance evaluation of middleware for service-oriented computing Guest Editors Qusay H. Mahmoud Dept. of Computing & Information Science University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, N1G 2W1 Canada qmahmoud AT cis.uoguelph.ca http://snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca/~qmahmoud Peter Langendoerfer IHP-Microelectronics Frankfurt (Oder), Germany langendoerfer AT ihp-microelectronics.com http://www.ihp- microelectronics.com/~langend/home.html ======================================================================== ------------>>> QTN ARTICLE SUBMITTAL POLICY <<<------------ ======================================================================== QTN is E-mailed around the middle of each month to over 10,000 subscribers worldwide. To have your event listed in an upcoming issue E-mail a complete description and full details of your Call for Papers or Call for Participation at <http://www.soft.com/News/QTN-Online/subscribe.html> QTN's submittal policy is: o Submission deadlines indicated in "Calls for Papers" should provide at least a 1-month lead time from the QTN issue date. 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