[TYPES/announce] Graph-Based Tool Contest: Call for Solutions

[Arend Rensink]

This is to call you attention to the tool contest, which is part of the ICGT 2008 workshop on Graph Based Tools (GraBaTs): http://www.fots.ua.ac.be/events/grabats2008/

Today, we selected three case studies out of ten submitted ones:
 * a refactoring case study,
 * a transformation performance and visualization case study,
 * a translation case study.

Until July 11, you can work on your solution to one or more of these case studies and submit it along with a brief description to http://www.easychair.org/conferences?conf=grabats2008

After the workshop, we will use this contest as the basis for a journal special issue.  Although we will invite the complete transformation community for submitting an article on the contest, you are strongly encouraged to start working on your solution now and present/compare it at the GraBaTs workshop.

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GraBaTs 2008 Tools Contest: Call for Solutions
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4th International Workshop on Graph-Based Tools: The Contest
Part of ICGT 2008: http://www.cs.le.ac.uk/events/icgt2008/
Contest Homepage: http://www.fots.ua.ac.be/events/grabats2008/

Tools are crucial for the promotion of graph transformation in industry. Currently, a number of tool environments for different graph transformation approaches are around. Though there have been some comparisons, it is still difficult for newcomers to decide for the right graph transformation tool to use for their application. Moreover, for most of the tool experts it is true that they know much about one or two tools but little about the others, whereas they could actually learn from and be inspired by one another.

The aim of this event is to compare the expressiveness, the usability and the performance of graph transformation tools along three selected case studies. In this way, we want to learn about the pros and cons of each tool considering different applications. A deeper understanding of the relative merits of different tool features will help to further improve graph transformation tools and to indicate open problems. 

The event is the second of its kind: the first graph-based tool contest took place as part of the AGTIVE 2007 workshop in Kassel, Germany.

Phase 2: Case solutions
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Three contest cases are published at http://www.fots.ua.ac.be/events/grabats2008/ (see "Cases"). All those who like to participate in the contest are asked to choose one or more case studies, take their favourite graph transformation tool and submit their solutions. A submission should consist of a description of the chosen case study variant (if any) and a presentation of the chosen solution, including a discussion of design decisions. Solutions are to be submitted by July 11, 2008, to http://www.easychair.org/conferences?conf=grabats2008.

Depending on the number of submissions, a selection will be made of solutions to be presented; the other submissions will get a chance for a (non-plenary) tool demo at the end of the workshop. In addition, it is planned to have a special journal issue where submitters have a chance to improve and write up their solutions.

Organizers:
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Arend Rensink (Email: rensink at cs.utwente.nl)
Pieter Van Gorp (Email: pieter.vangorp at ua.ac.be)

Important dates: 
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July 11, 2008: Deadline for solutions
July  21, 2008: Acceptance notice for solutions
September 12-13, 2008: GraBaTs contest session