by Ina Schieferdecker

Conference Chair

Dear CONQUEST participants, speakers and exhibitors,

I like to welcome you to the 12^th International Conference on Quality Engineering in Software Technology in Nuremberg, Germany, Sept. 16-18, 2009. We welcome our companions, newcomers, friends and colleagues from all over the world. We compiled the conference program out of over 80 submissions with the intent to offer a high-quality technical program both for academia and industry. We are gravely working on extending the reach of CONQUEST, improving the spread and quality of the submissions and attract experts’ participation for valuable, interesting and lively discussions. This is in itself an ongoing, continuous task and we like to thank everybody that helped us making CONQUEST 2009 a high-potential event.

Let me share with you some recent thoughts about quality engineering in software technologies. Some time ago, I discussed with my relatives about project and people management, roles and responsibilities, development and quality control, etc. It was not about software or software-based systems, but about machine tool manufacturing (the materials being used and the mechanics). I guess you guess it: we had comparable stories – one could even say identical stories. Since the software crisis back in the 1960ies, the software industry and research emphasized the specifics and differences of software as compared to any form of hardware. I think it was right that time as the software field had to be established. However, I question that we are still right these days. Software is basically a means to make systems more efficient, more handy, more functional, and alike. Sure, software and all development artefacts have a standing on their own. We may however have to reconsider what we can learn from others.

For example, I learnt at university that as software is virtual it cannot age and cannot have signs of usage, hence does not need much if at all maintenance. Today, we now know this to be a bit different: there is software being in use for 30 and more years. The tools with which the software had been developed years back are not available or in use any more. The environments in which the software was running changed as well. Along its usage, the software was extended, modified and adapted to changes in its environment. All this makes often a clean architecture corrupted – the software becomes less elastic for further changes, which is comparable to ageing materials. Software maintenance has to gain more attention in our community. Methods for handling software evolution to ensure that software continues to meet organisational and business objectives in a cost effective way are needed. For example, software renovation is an approach to address issues of ageing software by refactoring them to current settings. On the other hand, immateriality of software is responsible for another phenomenon: software is easily copied. By that, software duplicates, also called clones, are created right at hand and give rise for another quality and maintenance problem: think about a failure being reported, fault being identified and corrected – however, in one clone only – not in the others as the failure was detected in only one of them and nobody knows about the clones at other places. The story goes on that typically every clone requires individual bug fixing for the same faults. You immediately see that this cannot scale and became a critical issue as we do not have yet the methods at hand to prevent clones where possible, to reduce clones or to maintain clones, if needed, efficiently. It would be appreciated to see more contributions in the direction of software evolution and quality assurance of evolving software at CONQUEST.

Let me come back to the comparison with other engineering fields and consider e.g. how other fields address issues of duplicated work. At first, they realized that copies and/or duplicated developments are not an economic option. Standardization is a well-established means to manifest the knowledge in a field, to enable effective new developments on a higher technical level just by reuse and inclusion of existing work, and to prevent errors being repeated and fixes not being spread in the field. Along with object and component orientation, standardized libraries were envisioned but did not become reality. With model orientation, we discuss comparable ideas of sharing information and know-how in form of models – and again it will only become possible if we stop thinking that one is the only one that can solve a specific problem although it was solved that many times before. If we manage to install engineering discipline and culture within software technologies, we are better off at the end – despite tighter constraints that we impose. Then, we would need new practical methods for interoperable software components, which are not only technical but semantically interoperable. We would need effective methods for composition and integration and corresponding efficient methods for verification and validation. Other development processes would be needed: making explicit the review, selection and integration of existing components. There is none for the moment, even the revised V-model XT does not address this.

Let me conclude by repeating our wish to make CONQUEST the place where pressing issues in software development, evolution and quality assurance are presented and discussed on a high technical level with clear links to industrial adoption. We too much feel comfortable with repeating stories, which are interesting to listen to, but do not bring us any further. I am sure it would be more compelling to address open issues even if we do no have final solutions but that will allow us to further the software quality engineering field. I also vote for less ignorance to other engineering fields to learn from others and to advance our field faster. Despite the differences of software, the aim to design, construct and develop systems that finally meet the quality requirements put forward by users, stakeholders, manufacturers and alike unifies all engineers

Let us have interesting exchanges of point of views, of results, of new developments and let us work together at strengthening software quality engineering into a matured engineering discipline.

Yours,

Ina Schieferdecker

by Dagmar Wöhrl

Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology

Ladies and gentlemen,

I am very pleased to be the patron of the 2009 International Conference on Quality Engineering in Software Technology (CONQUEST 2009) in my hometown Nuremberg. After the Conference had taken place in Berlin and Potsdam in the last three years, it has now returned to its roots: Twelve years ago, the Arbeitskreis Software Qualität Franken e.V. (ASQF e.V.) for the first time invited software developers from industry and research to an exchange of experiences on software quality standards to Nuremberg. In the meantime, CONQUEST has become an internationally acknowledged information platform for CEOs and experts from industry and research for quality assurance and further training of specialised personnel in the field of software.

Modern information and communications technologies (ICTs) are an essential factor for more economic growth and employment. ICTs are also growth accelerators and innovation drivers in many further sectors due to the combination of ICTs and traditional products. In order to enhance the international competitiveness of Germany as an ICT location, the German Federal Chancellor in the year 2006 initiated the IT Summit process, a high-ranking dialogue with senior representatives from the political, economic and scientific fields. The preparation of the
IT Summits is coordinated by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology. The Third National IT Summit, which took place in Darmstadt on 20 November 2008, again highlighted the great growth opportunities of ICTs for German industry and in particular underlined the strategic significance of a software and (IT) services industry that is competitive at the global level for the overall economy and how important it is to meet the related need for skilled labour in this area.

I am pleased that the quality assurance of software products and the qualification of ICT specialists are again issues at the very top of the agenda of CONQUEST 2009 and that special attention is paid to the cooperation with this year's partner country, India. In view of these topics, the Conference makes an important contribution to the implementation of the decisions that were taken on the occasion of the latest IT Summit and to the further strengthening of Germany as an ICT location. Against this background, I wish CONQUEST much success and all participants many interesting contacts, talks and ideas.

Yours,

Dagmar Wöhrl