Overview

The Middleware conference is a forum for the discussion of important innovations and recent advances in the design, construction and uses of middleware. Middleware is a distributed-system software that resides between applications and underlying platforms (operating systems; databases; hardware), and/or ties together distributed applications, databases or devices. Its primary role is to coordinate and enable communication between different layers or components while isolating much of the complexity of distribution into a single, well tested and well understood system abstraction.

Following the success of past conferences in this series, the 10th International Middleware Conference will be the premier event for middleware research and technology in 2009. The scope of the conference is the design, implementation, deployment, and evaluation of distributed system platforms and architectures for future computing and communication environments. Highlights of the conference will include a high quality technical program, invited speakers, an industrial track, poster and demo presentations, a doctoral symposium, and workshops.

Submissions on a diversity of topics are sought; particularly ones that identify new research directions. The topics of the conference include, but are not limited to:

Middleware platforms

• Middleware for Web services and Web-service composition
• Middleware for cluster and grid computing
• Peer-to-peer middleware solutions
• Event-based, publish/subscribe, and message-oriented middleware
• Middleware for ubiquitous and mobile computing
• Middleware for embedded systems and sensor networks
• Middleware for next generation telecommunication platforms
• Semantic middleware
• Middleware supporting service-oriented architectures
• Reconfigurable, adaptable, and reflective middleware approaches
• Middleware support for multimedia
• Middleware solutions for (large scale) distributed databases
• Middleware for data intensive computing

Systems issues

• Reliability, fault tolerance, and quality-of-service
• Scalability of middleware
• Real-time solutions for middleware platforms
• Information assurance and security
• Dynamic configuration and self- or autonomic- management of middleware
• Novel communication protocols and architectures
• Virtualization, virtualized provisioning, and their interaction with middleware

Design principles and tools

• Methodologies and tools for designing, implementing, verifying, and evaluating middleware
• Novel development paradigms, APIs, and languages
• Existing paradigms revisited: object models, aspect orientation, etc.
• Evaluation techniques and empirical studies for middleware solutions

Industry Papers

The conference strongly encourages submission of industry-focused papers and use case studies; full papers should be submitted to the main program, where they will be reviewed using appropriate criteria (e.g. emphasizing experience and system evolution), and accepted papers will be published in the main conference proceedings. Additionally, short industry-focused papers (10 pages, Springer LNCS style) may be submitted to a special industrial track; accepted short papers will be presented at the conference and published in the ACM Digital Library. Note that submissions to the main program may indicate a willingness to be referred to the Industrial Track if a paper is not accepted to the main program.

Big Ideas Papers

This year, we particularly encourage "big ideas papers"; that is papers that have the potential for opening up new research directions. For such papers, the potential to motivate new research is more important than full experimental evaluation, though some preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of the approach or idea is important. Authors should indicate in the introduction that their paper is a vision of a big idea, rather than more mature work. Such papers should clearly indicate why the idea is revolutionary and not evolutionary; what the major questions still to be answered are; and possible avenues of attack for the community to pursue towards the development of the idea.

Submission & Publication

Submissions will be handled via the conference web page at https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/MWC2009/ You will be requested to upload the file of your paper to the conference server (please avoid bitmaps!). Please also fill in the appropriate information in the online form.

The Middleware 2009 proceedings will be published in Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) both in print and in electronic form.

Papers must not exceed 20 pages, including abstract, all figures, all tables, and references. Papers should include a short abstract and up to 6 keywords. Submitted papers should follow the formatting instructions of the Springer LNCS Style

April 20 - Abstract Submission
April 20 April 27 (5:00pm PST) - Paper Submission
(no further extensions will be made)

July 15 - Notification of acceptance
August 24 - Camera ready due