Reflection Workshop

[Gregor J. Kiczales <gregor@parc.xerox.com>]

(apologies to those of you who will receive this twice)



                        CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

                     ECOOP/OOPSLA-90 Workshop on
               Reflection and Metalevel Architectures
                    in Object-Oriented Programming

                      Monday, October 22, 1990
                            Ottawa, Canada


Reflective programming languages have tremendous practical  value.  In
fact,  external  facilities  are  often  provided  for  non-reflective
languages to mimic reflective behaviors. Reflective languages  provide
natural  debugging  and tracing facilities as part of the language and
not as facilities supplied by the external environment.  A  reflective
language  is  also capable of performing self evaluation tasks such as
code analysis and verification, which are difficult to  achieve  in  a
non-reflective language.

This workshop will focus on  all  issues  related  to  reflection  and
metalevel  architectures in object-oriented programming. Presentations
and discussion will  address  both  the  theoretical  foundations  and
practical  applications  of  reflection  in  programming languages and
environments.

The workshop will have three main  sessions:  theory,  implementation,
and  applications.  In the first session, participants are expected to
define precisely the vocabulary and terminology  used  for  describing
reflection   in  programming  languages  in  general  and  in  OOP  in
particular. Examples of such vocabulary  are  reification,  metalevel,
reflective   facilities,   structure   reflection,  and  computational
reflection.

As part of this session,  the  discussion  should  also  identify  the
relationship   between   metalevel  architectures  and  reflection  in
object-oriented  programming.  For  example,   are   metaobjects   and
metalevel   architectures  necessary,  sufficient,  or  necessary  and
sufficient to achieve reflection, and if so why? The discussion should
also  address the problems associated with infinite metaregression and
whether these problems represent, in theory, a threat to  the  concept
of reflection.

The  second  session  will  focus  on  practical  issues  related   to
implementation    of    reflective   object-oriented   languages   and
environments.  Participants  will  discuss  architectures  of  current
languages  that  support  reflective  facilities  and how they achieve
reflection. The penalties and/or efficiency considerations that result
from  implementing reflection in a language and the techniques used to
deal with these issues should be addressed as part of this session.

The last session will be devoted to  applications  that  benefit  from
reflection  and metalevel architectures. Examples of such applications
are concurrency, distributed  systems,  persistent  objects/databases,
language  extensions,  and  self  modifying  code. Participants should
focus on features of the reflective  facilities  that  facilitate  the
implementation of their applications and discuss the difficulties they
may encounter if the application was implemented in  a  non-reflective
environment.

Workshop attendance will be by invitation only and is  limited  to  30
participants.  Invitations  will  be  issued  on the basis of extended
abstracts or position papers. Appropriate papers should  not  be  less
than  3  single  spaced  pages and should state clearly their authors'
position and supporting arguments for issues related to one or more of
the following topics:

   - Definitions and terminology of reflection.
   - Architectures for achieving reflection.
   - The level on which  reflection is implemented (object, underlying 
     language, metalevel).
   - Implementation of OOP languages  and  environments  that  support 
     reflection.
   - Advantages and disadvantages of reflection in OOP.
   - Reflection in concurrent systems.
   - Applications of reflective facilities.


The papers will be reviewed by members of the workshop  committee  and
acceptance  will  be  based  on  both the relevance of the work to the
workshop theme and the quality and clarity  of  the  papers.  Accepted
papers  will  be  distributed to the participants before the workshop,
and based on the workshop outcome, we may elect to generate some  form
of  formal  publication  that  will  include  longer  versions  of the
accepted submissions.

Send five copies of extended abstract before August 1, 1990 to:
---------------------------------------------------------------
    Mamdouh H. Ibrahim
    EDS Research & Development
    3551 Hamlin Rd, 4th. Floor
    Auburn Hills, MI 48057 USA
    Phone: (313) 370-1629
    e-mail: mhi@edsdrd.eds.com


Important Dates:
----------------
    August 1, 1990          Deadline for receiving extended abstracts.
    September 17, 1990      Notification of invitation or rejection.

For further information, contact any of the workshop organizers.

Workshop organizers:
--------------------
    Jean-Pierre Briot                               (European Coordinator)
    Universite Paris VI - LITP                      briot@litp.ibp.fr

    Brian Foote                                     (USA Coordinator)
    University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign        foote@cs.uiuc.edu

    Gregor Kiczales                                 (USA Coordinator)
    Xerox PARC                                      gregor.pa@xerox.com

    Mamdouh H. Ibrahim                              (Chair)
    EDS Research & Development                      mhi@edsdrd.eds.com

    Satoshi Matsuoka                                (Far East Coordinator)
    University of Tokyo, Japan                      matsu@is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp

    Takuo Watanabe                                  (Far East Coordinator)
    Tokyo Institute of Technology   Japan           takuo@is.titech.ac.jp