As the complexity of modern software systems grows, so does the need
to deal reliably and efficiently with an increasing number of
abnormal situations. The most general mechanism for this is exception
handling, which is becoming a standard feature in modern languages.
A general exception handling mechanism should be well integrated with
the other features of a language and conform to its programming
paradigms. Increasing evidence from researchers and practitioners
indicates that the exception handling in Ada 95 does not adequately
reflect the whole range of programming paradigms supported by the
language. In particular, the exception handling model remains based
on Ada 83 while Ada 95 is object oriented. Furthermore, exceptions
and concurrency are, arguably, not well integrated. A task with an
unhandled exception dies silently, and one has to resort to
asynchronous transfer of control for passing exceptions
asynchronously between tasks. It is not clear that this solution
extends well into a distributed environment. Yet another problem is
the existence of anonymous exceptions.
New fault tolerance schemes based on existing exception handling
facilities have been developed in research environments. This is
important as it allows higher level abstractions providing more
advanced mechanisms to be introduced without impacting the language
definition.
 The aims of the workshop are:
- to share experience on how to build modern systems that have to
deal with abnormal situations;
- to discuss how solutions to those needs can be developed employing
standard Ada features including the current exception handling
paradigm; and
- to propose new exception handling mechanisms / paradigms that can
be included in future revisions of the Ada language and also fit high
integrity language profiles for safety critical systems.
Participation
Participation to the workshop is limited to 25-35 individuals and is
by invitation upon acceptance of a submission. All types of
submissions are welcome: brief position papers, experience reports,
full research papers, etc. All papers will be made available to
workshop participants before the workshop. The workshop will include
talks based on the submitted papers and intensive shepherded
discussion sessions. The submissions and a workshop summary will be
published in Ada Letters.
Submissions
Submissions should be sent electronically (preferable in ps or pdf
format) to Alexander Romanovsky:
alexander.romanovsky@ncl.ac.uk
| Electronic submission: | January 31, 2001 |
| Notification: | March 15, 2001 |
| Revised versions of papers: | April 15, 2001 |
Workshop co-chairs:
Alexander Romanovsky (U. of Newcastle)
Alfred Strohmeier (EPFL)
Andy Wellings (U. of York)
Workshop Program Committee:
Bill Bail (MITRE)
Jörg Kienzle (EPFL)
Pat Rogers (Software Arts and Sciences)
Bo Sanden (Colorado Technical U.)
Anand Tripathi (U. of Minnesota)
Tullio Vardanega (ESA)
Thomas Wolf (Paranor)
Workshop web page:
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