[ecoop-info] Call for Talk Proposals: Data-Centric Programming, San Diego, Jan 2014

[Jeremy.Gibbons at cs.ox.ac.uk]

ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Data-Centric Programming 2014
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Colocated with POPL, January 25, 2014 | San Diego, USA
http://research.microsoft.com/DCP2014
Submission: November 18, 2013
Notification: December 2, 2013

We're very pleased to announce DCP 2014, an exciting workshop which builds on the success of the Data-Driven Functional Programming (DDFP) workshop at POPL 2013. This workshop is for anyone who loves the application of functional programming (and indeed other programming paradigms as well) to data-rich domains. Please consider submitting to the workshop - whatever your flavor of data, whatever your flavor of data-centric programming. We want this to be a great event that opens up opportunities at the intersection of data and programming.

Functional programming techniques are increasingly important in data-centric programming: languages like Haskell, Scala, and C# draw heavily on a range of functional techniques and find application in numerous data-driven domains; paradigms like map/reduce and its extensions lie at the core of modern scalable data processing; and "information-rich" languages like Ur, F#, and Gosu use meta-programming to integrate type-safe queries, web-based APIs, and scalable data sources - along with associated semantically-rich metadata - into the programming language. In principle, the expressiveness, strong typing, and core functional paradigm of these languages make them an ideal choice for expressing robust and scalable data-centric programming. 

On the other end, the web of data is growing at an enormous pace, with few dedicated software applications capable of dealing efficiently in information-rich spaces. Reasons for that include one (or more) of the following research issues: lack of integrated development environments (IDEs, such as Visual Studio and Eclipse), poor programming language support, lack of standard testbeds and/or benchmarks, inadequate training, and perhaps the need for curriculum revision. Properly addressing these issues requires interdisciplinary skills, and the collaboration between academia and industry. 

Many challenges remain.


Workshop Goals
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This workshop invites submissions that explore the gap between today's data management challenges, particularly the ones related to dealing with large amounts of semantically rich data, and the lack of adequate tools. We are looking for contributions that discuss, promote and further advance the programming of semantically-rich data including the development of new languages, extension of existing ones, and the inclusion of semantic-enabled capabilities into existing IDEs. 

In this forum, we will discuss, promote, and advance the use of data-centric programming in information-rich data spaces - including the development of new programming and data-manipulation systems as well as the extension of existing ones.

By devising methods for handling data from the programming level, we can promote the research and development of better data-centric programming technologies as a whole, as well as facilitate the shift towards both principled and effective data-centric computing.


Talk Proposals
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We want DCP to be as informal and interactive as possible. The program will thus involve a combination of invited talks, contributed talks about work in progress, and open-ended discussion sessions. There will be no published proceedings, but participants will be invited to submit working documents, talk slides, etc. to be posted on the workshop website.

We invite proposals for talks in any area related to the connection between programming and data, including, but not limited to:

* Formal systems that capture the essential theoretical elements of data-centric programming

* Experimental systems that demonstrate novel data-centric programming techniques

* Technology that demonstrates correctness, scalability, productivity, robustness, or maintainability of data-centric programs

* Schema evolution, schema-type mapping, query languages, probabilistic programming, network-connected programming, or semi-structured data

* Programming-related aspects of knowledge representation techniques including database theory, ontology techniques, and linked data

* Impact of specific application areas (e.g. e-science, e-gov, sensors) on information-rich application design

* Data exploration and visualization

* Evaluation of data quality

* Plugins and IDEs for information-rich application development

* Cleaning and provenance of data, services, and processes

Talks about work in progress are particularly encouraged. If you have any questions about the relevance of a particular topic, please contact the PC chairs at the address dcp.2014 at lambda-calcul.us .

We solicit proposals for contributed talks. Proposals should be at most 2 pages, in either plain text or PDF format. We plan to allocate 30-minute talk slots; but proposals for shorter or longer talks will also be considered. Speakers may also submit supplementary material (e.g. a full paper, talk slides) if they desire, which PC members are free (but not expected) to read.


Organization
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Program Chairs

Jeremy Gibbons, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Evelyne Viegas, Microsoft Research, United States

Program Committee (others to be confirmed)

Soren Auer, University of Leipzig, Germany 
Nate Foster, Cornell University, United States
Juliana Freire, Polytechnic Institute of New York University, United States
Erik Meijer, Applied Duality, United States
Steffen Staab, University of Koblenz, Germany
Don Syme, Microsoft Research Cambridge, United Kingdom