Active Object Systems: Theory and Practice

Overview:

Active objects combine the concepts of concurrency and encapsulation. This combination is intuitively appealing since it liberates us from the constrains of a serialized step-at-a-time style, while preserving the advantages of modularization. A variety of theoretical models of active objects have been proposed and a number of practical realizations exist.

Goals:

The goals of the workshop will be to share experiences in specifying and building Active Object Systems (AOS), to catalog and understand AOS' advantages and disadvantages, and to understand what further work is necessary to better establish AOS as a part of mainstream application development.

Focus:

The workshop will focus on both theoretical issues and practical systems used in the construction of application software in industry and commerce.

Requirements for Attendance:

All attendees are required to write a position paper (5-10 pages) and prepare a 20-min. presentation. Depending on the number of attendees, not all may be required to make a presentation. Those that are will be notified prior to the workshop. In preparing the material, the following questions and issues should be addressed:

  1. What sets of circumstances require the use of AOS?
  2. From the standpoint of your work, which aspects of AOS theory need more attention? Where is the theory incomplete?
  3. What aspects of AOS theory make implementation difficult, and how are these surmounted in your work?
  4. Which models of AOS have proven successful in practice and why?
  5. What is the learning curve experience of end users? How can learning be improved, from either perspective, theoretical or practical?
  6. What are the remaining impediments to making AOS sucessful in the users' eyes? We will have presentations in the morning and afternoon, with a portion of the afternoon reserved to collate and record what we have learned during the workshop.

Submissions should be in postscript and emailed to gilbert@acm.org no later than Aug. 5th. Notifications for attendence and presentation preparation will be sent out (email) on or before Aug.20.

Organizers:

John Gilbert, Objective Software
Bran Selic, ObjecTime Limited
Bob Wilhelm, Objective Control

Submissions:

John Gilbert
Objective Software
1985 W. Henderson Rd. Suite 525
Columbus, OH 43220
Phone: (614) 457-4487
Fax: (614) 459-7310
Email: gilbert@acm.org