[TYPES/announce] CFP: First Workshop on Cross-Model Language Design and Implementation

[James Cheney]

[The topic of the workshop, cross-model programming, includes many
topics of interest to readers of TYPES, including typed languages or
type systems for language-integrated query, Web programming, database
programming, etc.  --James]



                      CALL FOR PAPERS

                         XLDI 2012:
              First international workshop on
       Cross-model Language Design and Implementation
       Affiliated with ICFP 2012, Copenhagen, Denmark
                  Sponsored by ACM SIGPLAN

                     September 9, 2012

          http://workshops.inf.ed.ac.uk/xldi2012/


There has recently been a burst of systems research advocating
high-performance commodity "big data" or "massively parallel"
computing models, often using simpler high-level languages or
interfaces as front-ends. This work is often described as part of a
shift towards a new "cloud computing" paradigm, but these buzzwords
mask the major problems these techniques face: both big data and
massively parallel systems currently employ systems-based methods and
testing regimes that cannot offer guarantees of safety, security,
correctness and evolvability. Language-based techniques, particularly
formalization, verification, abstraction, and representation
independence, offer the promise to reconcile the performance benefits
of new execution models with the advantages of modern programming
languages.

Cross-model programming is not a new problem: for example, smooth
integration of relational database programming models into
general-purpose programming languages has been a long-standing
challenge, with some approaches now in mainstream use (such as
Microsoft's LINQ). But in the last few years there has been a dramatic
increase in the number of domain-specific languages or libraries for
interfacing with different computing models (data-parallelism, sensor
networks, MapReduce-style fault-tolerant parallelism, distributed
programming, Bayesian inference engines, declarative networking, or
multi-tier Web programming), as well as techniques for
language-integrated querying or processing data over other data
models. Cross-model programs that execute in multiple (possibly
heterogeneous) environments have much more challenging security,
debugging, validation, and optimization problems.

- Language designs for simplifying cross-model programming with
  database queries, data parallelism, networking, distributed
  programming, Web programming, or security primitives.
- Formalizations or comparisons of existing languages, libraries or
  extensions for integrating multiple execution models
- Monads, comprehensions, arrows, applicative functors, formlets, and
  other abstractions for combining or embedding models
- Compilation and implementation techniques for cross-model programs
- Type systems (polymorphism, dependent types, GADTs, modal types,
  refinement types) to support safe cross-model programming
- Domain-specific embedded languages or libraries, syntax extensions,
  meta-programming facilities, or staged computation.
- Language support for programming with XML, RDF, JSON, or other data
  interchange formats, or for programming Web services or other
  distributed programming formalisms.
- Techniques for securing, debugging, performance profiling,
  optimization, or provenance tracking in cross-model programs.

SUBMISSIONS:

Submission should consist of short papers of at most 3 pages in ACM
SIGPLAN conference format (sigplanconf.cls). Submissions will be
accepted electronically. The submission site will be advertised around
one month before the submission deadline. Simultaneous submission to
another workshop, conference or journal is not allowed. An author of
each accepted paper is expected to present the paper at the workshop.
There will be no formal proceedings, but submissions will be made
available from the workshop web page. Authors will retain the
copyright.

IMPORTANT DATES:

Submission: May 15
Notification: July 1
Final papers due: August 1
Workshop: September 9
ICFP 2012: September 10-12

ORGANIZATION:

Program committee:

James Cheney, University of Edinburgh (co-chair)
Kathleen Fisher, Tufts University
Matthew Fluet, Rochester Institute of Technology
Nate Foster, Cornell University
Torsten Grust, University of Tuebingen (co-chair)
Anastasios Kementsietsidis, IBM Research
Shriram Krishnamurthi, Brown University
Peter Thiemann, University of Freiburg
Atsushi Ohori, Tohoku University
Jan van den Bussche, University of Hasselt