Call for Demonstrations and Tools

This track highlights live demonstrations of product-line tools and practices tackling current industrial challenges.

Introduction

The SPLC 2023 Demonstrations and Tools track provides an opportunity for live demonstrations of academic or commercial systems and software product-line tools. Accepted demonstrations and tools will be presented within the main conference session (using a mix of slides and the running tool) and at demo booths during a dedicated session or breaks and on-demand.

New this year, Elsevier, with the help of the Demonstrations and Tools Committee, is offering a Best Tool Award of 150 Euros. Additionally, we plan to have a special issue in the track on Original Software Publications of the Elsevier Science of Computer Programming Journal. It is a new track for publishing research software, not papers about software (https://www.journals.elsevier.com/science-of-computer-programming/call-for-software/a-new-software-track-on-original-software-publications-science-of-computer-programming). Authors of selected software from the demonstrations and tools track and from the artifacts in the research track will be invited to submit their software to the special issue. Since the publication is of the software, not the paper, there will be no requirement for additional work on the software to hit the novelty requirements. 

Topics

Areas of interest include, but are not limited to demonstrations and tools supporting:

  • feature modeling,
  • variant management,
  • validation and verification,
  • product derivation and generation,
  • product-line testing and further analyses,
  • measurement and optimisation of non-functional properties of product lines,
  • language product lines.

Or simply any tool that supports dealing with variability or configurability in different domains such as IT, software-intensive and cyber-physical systems, Web and Cloud-based systems (incl. (micro) service-oriented systems), Internet of Things, consumer electronics, automotive, automation, software ecosystems and multi-product lines, etc.

Submission/Publishing

Demonstration and tool papers must present either a new tool, a new tool component, or novel extensions to an existing tool. Tools previously shown at SPLC should include a specific description of its new features. Tool papers should provide a short description of the theoretical foundations, after which emphasis should be on design and implementation concerns (incl. software architecture and core data structures), closed by the description of experience with realistic case studies. It is strongly encouraged to make the tool publicly available, preferably on the web, even if only for evaluation.The page limit for all demonstration and tool submissions is four pages, including figures and references, plus at most two pages for an appendix (which will not be published in the proceedings) describing the presentation of the tool or concept during the conference. Submissions must also include a link to a short (max. 5 minutes) video demonstrating the core features of the approach or tool.

Submissions must adhere to the latest ACM Master Article Template: https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template.

Latex users should use the “sigconf” option, so they are recommended to use the template that can be found in “sample-sigconf.tex”. In this way, the following latex code can be placed at the start of the latex document to create a double column layout:

\documentclass[sigconf,review]{acmart}
 
\acmConference[SPLC'23]{27th International Systems and Software Product Line Conference}{August 28--September 1, 2023}{Tokyo, Japan}

The SPLC proceedings will be published in the ACM Digital Library.

By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all ACM Publications Policies, including ACM’s new Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. Alleged violations of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an ORCID ID, so you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper. ACM has been involved in ORCID from the start and we have recently made a commitment to collect ORCID IDs from all of our published authors. The collection process has started and will roll out as a requirement throughout 2022. We are committed to improve author discoverability, ensure proper attribution and contribute to ongoing community efforts around name normalization; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts.

The author of the accepted submission must pay a full registration fee for the submission to be published. SPLC 2023 is primarily a physical event and papers are expected to be presented on site, except where no co-author is able to attend SPLC 2023 in Tokyo. If any co-author of a paper is attending physically, they will need to present the paper. If no co-author is able to come to Tokyo to present an accepted paper, we ask that you let us know for which paper no co-author is able to present in-person. Such remote presenters will be accommodated for presenting online, live where feasible or else via a recording in exceptional circumstances.

Evaluation

At least three demonstrations and tools committee members will review each submission. The criteria for evaluating a submission include:

  • the relevance of the proposed demonstration to the SPLC audience,
  • the technical soundness of the demonstrated tool,
  • the originality of the submission’s underlying ideas,
  • the quality of the submission’s presentation and its associated video, and
  • the degree to which the submission considers the relevant literature.

Submission link

Submissions should be sent using EasyChair:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=splc23 (Demo and Tools Track)

Important Dates (AoE time)

  • Paper submission: June 12, 2023 June 18, 2023 (23h59, AoE)
  • Notification: July 2, 2023
  • Camera-ready papers: July 9, 2023
  • Conference: August 28 – September 1, 2023

Chairs

Xavier Devroey
University of Namur, Belgium
Monica Pinto
University of Malaga, Spain

Contact: splc23demotoolstrack@easychair.org 

Program Committee

  • Hugo Araujo, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, BR
  • Inmaculada Ayala,  Universidad de Málaga, ES
  • Rafael Capilla, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, ES
  • Alejandro Cortiñas, Universidade da Coruña, ES
  • Carlos Diego Nascimento Damasceno, Radboud University, NL 
  • Sophie Fortz, NaDI, Université de Namur, BE
  • Barbara Gallina, Mälardalen University, SE
  • Dirk Muthig, Siemens
  • Tsuneo Nakanishi, Fukuoka University, JP
  • Elena Navarro, University of Castilla-La Mancha, ES
  • Joost Noppen, British Telecom, GB
  • Chico Sundermann, University of Ulm, GER