Call For Papers

SPECIAL ISSUE OF 'COMPUTER NETWORKS'
ON
FEATURE INTERACTIONS IN EMERGING APPLICATION DOMAINS

Introduction

Features are new services or options added to an existing base system. Feature interaction occurs when one feature modifies or subverts the operation of another one. Although the phenomenon was first studied in the domain of services added to telecommunication systems, it is not unique to that area. Feature interaction can occur in any software system that is subject to changes. The International Conference on Feature Interactions (ICFI) has included papers on feature interactions in computer security, protocol design, middleware, appliance development, product line development, and business flow management. Other areas such as medicine, engineering, and law that have not been directly covered in ICFI are also domains of interest.

Although interactions among classical telephony features are now fairly well understood, the feature interaction problem presents new challenges in emerging types of systems based on policies, dynamic services including Web services, mobility, or new telephony architectures such as Parlay, 3G, or SIP. Features may also arise in distributed systems architectures including CORBA, .NET, GRID and active networks. The proliferation of players and software/service engineering techniques coupled with the constant pressure for the rapid introduction of new services and applications leads to undesirable interactions that jeopardize the quality of the products delivered as well as the satisfaction of the users. Detecting, solving, preventing, and managing such interactions at different stages of the development process are important problems that need to be addressed with cost-effective techniques and tools. Techniques successfully applied to conventional telecommunications systems are still useful in many cases, yet they may no longer be able to cope with the complexity of emerging systems.

Revised versions of papers already presented at conferences (such as ICFI) are welcome; however the referees will have to be satisfied that the new paper is sufficiently different from the conference paper to warrant publication.

Instructions on how to submit papers are available here. The suggested length is about 20 pages.

Target dates

Editors

For information on the journal Computer Networks Please visit:

• http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/13891286
• http://www.elsevier.com/locate/issn/13891286