The Second International Workshop on Program Debugging (IWPD 2011)

Munich, Germany
July 18, 2011
(in conjunction with COMPSAC 2011)

Software today is inherently large and complex, in fact more so than ever before. Consequently, debugging when failure is observed is also progressively becoming much more difficult and time-consuming. Manual debugging is quickly losing its viability as a practical option, and yet at the same time, techniques that aim for automatic fault localization are still not accurately and consistently able to pinpoint the locations of faults to a desired degree. Distinguishing executions that fail due to different causative faults, reliably recording and replaying failed executions, and fixing bugs without introducing new faults are but some of the debugging-related problems faced by developers today. Furthermore, formal verification techniques suffer from complexity and scalability issues, static techniques can often be imprecise, and the heavy performance overhead of dynamic techniques can prohibit their application. While studies are being conducted to resolve these problems, researchers often make unrealistic assumptions, and subject software may not be representative of large-scale industrial applications. Concerns of such a nature can induce in practitioners a lack of faith with regard to what research proposals can offer and deliver.


This workshop brings to light the latest challenges and advances in research topics associated with program debugging, with a special emphasis on methodology, technology, and environment. Also accepted are experience reports that describe industrial and/or empirical studies related to these three aspects. IWPD aims to provide a forum and serve as a platform for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas, present new advancements, and identify further challenges in the context of program debugging.


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Topics of Interest
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IWPD 2011 welcomes submissions in all aspects related to program debugging. Submissions may cover, but are not limited to, the following topics:

* Automation of program debugging
* Challenges and emerging techniques in program debugging
* Static and dynamic analyses for software fault localization and bug-fixing
* Impacts of program languages and environments on debugging
* Software risk analysis and fault proneness prediction
* Software testing, verification, and validation for debugging
* Online monitoring and record/replay for program debugging
* Reducing the cost of program debugging
* Empirical studies and benchmarking
* Experience reports and industrial best practices
* Tool support
* Transitioning from research to practice
* Integrating debugging with other software development activities
* Approaches to teaching program debugging


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Important Dates
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* March 20, 2011:        Submission deadline
* April 15, 2011:        Author notification
* May 2, 2011:           Camera-ready copies


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Submissions
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Submit original papers (not published or submitted elsewhere) with
a maximum of ten pages. Include the title of the paper, the name
and affiliation of each author, a 200-word abstract, and up to
6 keywords. The format of your submission must follow the IEEE
conference proceedings format posted at
http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html


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Workshop Proceedings
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Accepted papers will appear in the Proceedings of COMPSAC 2011 published by IEEE Computer Society and made available in the IEEE digital library. Papers are also indexed in the EI Compendex database.


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Special Issue
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Authors of selected best papers from the workshop will be invited to submit an extended version to a special issue of Software: Practice and Experience published by Wiley.


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Workshop Chairs
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* W. Eric Wong           University of Texas at Dallas, USA
* T.H. Tse               The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong


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Program Committee
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* Fevzi Belli             University of Paderborn, Germany
* Christof Budnik         Siemens Corporate Research, USA
* W.K. Chan               City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
* T Y Chen                Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
* Zhenyu Chen             Nanjing University, China
* Byoungju Choi           Ewha Womans University, Korea
* Sudipto Ghosh           Colorado State University, USA
* Arjan van Gemund        Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands
* Gregory M. Kapfhammer   Allegheny College, USA
* Qianxiang Wang          Peking University, China
* Dianxiang Xu            Dakota State University, USA
* Zhenyu Zhang            Institute of Software,
Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
* Xiangyu Zhang           Purdue University, USA
* Hong Zhu                Oxford Brookes University, UK


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General Inquires
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For more detailed and updated information, please refer to http://paris.utdallas.edu/IWPD11 or contact Professor Eric Wong at ewong@utdallas.edu or Professor T H Tse at thtse@cs.hku.hk.