TACAS 2004

Tenth International Conference on
TOOLS AND ALGORITHMS FOR THE CONSTRUCTION
AND ANALYSIS OF SYSTEMS

A member conference of the European Joint Conferences
on Theory and Practice of Software
(ETAPS 2004)

March 29 - April 2, 2004 Barcelona, Spain

CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION

TACAS is a forum for researchers, developers and users interested in rigorously based tools for the construction and analysis of systems. The conference serves to bridge the gaps between different communities --- including but not limited to those devoted to formal methods, software and hardware verification, static analysis, programming languages, software engineering, real-time systems, and communications protocols --- that share common interests in, and techniques for, tool development. In particular, by providing a venue for the discussion of common problems, heuristics, algorithms, data structures and methodologies, TACAS aims to support researchers in their quest to improve the utility, reliability, flexibility and efficiency of tools for building systems.

TACAS is a member conference of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software (ETAPS), which is the primary European forum for academic and industrial researchers working on topics relating to Software Science. ETAPS 2004 is the seventh joint conference in this series. The conference is organized by the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC). The prior conferences have been ETAPS 98 in Lisbon, ETAPS 99 in Amsterdam, ETAPS 2000 in Berlin, ETAPS 2001 in Genova, ETAPS 2002 in Grenoble, and ETAPS 2003 in Warsaw.

Tool descriptions and case studies with a conceptual message and theoretical papers with a clear link to tool construction are all encouraged. The specific topics covered by the conference include, but are not limited to, the following:

Specification and verification techniques

Theorem-proving and model-checking

System construction and transformation techniques

Static and run-time analysis

Compositional and refinement-based methodologies

Testing and test-case generation

Analytical techniques for real-time, hybrid and safety-critical systems

Tool environments and tool architectures

Applications and case studies

As TACAS addresses a heterogeneous audience, potential authors are strongly encouraged to write about their ideas in general and jargon-independent, rather than application- and domain-specific, terms. Authors reporting on tools or case studies are strongly encouraged to indicate how their experimental results can be reproduced and confirmed independently.

TACAS 2004 received a record number of submissions: 145 research papers and 17 tool papers were submitted. The Program Committee selected 37 research papers and 6 tool papers. The average acceptance ratio was 26.5% (25.5% for research papers and 35.3% for tool papers).

Conference program 2004 (NEW)

On-line proceedings 2004 via Springer LINK (NEW)

IMPORTANT DATES

ETAPS 2004 conferences and other satellite events will be held March 27 - April 4, 2004.

As a part of ETAPS, TACAS adheres to ETAPS submission and notification deadlines:

October 17, 2003	Strict deadline for submission of abstracts (of research papers and tool demonstration papers)
October 24, 2003	Strict deadline for submission of full versions (of research papers and tool demonstration papers)
December 12, 2003	Notification of authors
January 9, 2004	Camera ready version due
March 29 - April 2, 2004	TACAS 2004 Conference

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

As with other ETAPS conferences, TACAS accepts two types of contributions: research papers and tool demonstration papers. Both types of contributions will appear in the proceedings and have oral presentations during the conference.

Please notice that there are two different conference services for submission of papers:

The TACAS 2004 Conference Service is used for submission of research papers.
The TACAS 2004 TOOL Conference Service is used for submission of tool demonstration papers.

Authors who anticipate possible last minute delays in the submission of a full research paper or a full tool demonstration paper are encouraged to submit a title and abstract well in advance of the deadline.

Research papers

Research papers cover one or more of the topics above, including tool development and case studies from a perspective of scientific research. Research papers are evaluated by the TACAS Program Committee. Submitted research papers must:

be in English and have a maximum of 15 pages,
present original research which is unpublished and not submitted elsewhere (conferences or journals) -- in particular, simultaneous submission of the same contribution to multiple ETAPS conferences is forbidden,
use the Springer-Verlag LNCS style
be submitted electronically in Postscript or PDF form via the TACAS 2004 Conference Service (abstract no later than October 17 and full paper no later than October 24)

Submissions deviating from these instructions may be rejected without review. Any questions regarding this policy should be directed to the Program Committee Chairs Kurt Jensen or Andreas Podelski prior to submitting.

Tool demonstration papers

Tool demonstration papers present tools based on aforementioned technologies (e.g., theorem-proving, model-checking, static analysis, or other formal methods) or fall into the above application areas (e.g., system construction and transformation, testing, analysis of real-time and hybrid systems, etc.). Tool demonstration papers are evaluated by the TACAS Tool Chair with the help of the Program Committee.

Submitted tool demonstration papers must:

be in English and have a maximum of 4 pages,
have an appendix (not included in the 4 page count) that provides a detailed description of:
- how the oral presentation will be conducted, e.g. illustrated by a number of snapshots,
- the availability of the tool, the number and types of users, other information which may illustrate the maturity and robustness of the tool,
- link to a web-page for the tool (if this exists).
The appendix will not be included in the proceedings, but during the evaluation of the tool demonstration papers it will be equally important as the pages for the proceedings
use the Springer-Verlag LNCS style
be submitted electronically in Postscript or PDF form via the TACAS 2004 TOOL Conference Service (abstract no later than October 17 and full paper no later than October 24)

Submissions deviating from these instructions may be rejected without review. Any questions regarding this policy should be directed to the Tool Chair Bernhard Steffen.

PROGRAM COMMITTEE CHAIRS

Kurt Jensen University of Aarhus (Denmark)	Andreas Podelski Max-Planck-Institut Saarbrücken (Germany)

TOOL CHAIR Bernhard Steffen Universität Dortmund (Germany)	INVITED SPEAKER Antti Valmari Tampere University of Technology (Finland)

TACAS STEERING COMMITTEE

Ed Brinksma Univ. of Twente (The Netherlands)	Rance Cleaveland SUNY at Stony Brook (USA)
Kim Larsen Aalborg Univ. (Denmark)	Bernhard Steffen Univ. Dortmund (Germany)

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Jonathan Billington, University of South Australia, Adelaide (Australia)	Bernard Boigelot, Université de Liège (Belgium)
Ed Brinksma, University of Twente (The Netherlands)	Witold Charatonik, University of Wroclaw (Poland)
Rance Cleaveland, SUNY Stony Brook (USA)	Giorgio Delzanno, Università di Genova (Italy)
David L. Dill, Stanford University (USA)	Susanna Donatelli, Università degli Studi di Torino (Italy)
Javier Esparza, University of Edinburgh (UK)	John Hatcliff, Kansas State University (USA)
Kurt Jensen, University of Aarhus (Denmark)	Orna Kupferman, Hebrew University, Jerusalem (Israel)
Yassine Lakhnech, Verimag Grenoble (France)	Kim Larsen, Aalborg University (Denmark)
Anca Muscholl, Université Paris 7 (France)	Anna Philippou, University of Cyprus (Cyprus)
Andreas Podelski, Max-Planck-Institut Saarbrücken (Germany)	Jaco van de Pol, CWI Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
Jakob Rehof, Microsoft Redmond (USA)	Martin C. Rinard, MIT, Cambridge (USA)
Bill Roscoe, Oxford University (UK)	Bernard Steffen, Universität Dortmund (Germany)
Ofer Strichman, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (USA)	Antti Valmari, Tampere University of Technology (Finland)
Andreas Zeller, Universität des Saarlandes (Germany)

ETAPS 2004 Home Page