Proceedings of the 1st ACM international workshop on Empirical assessment of software engineering languages and technologies: held in conjunction with the 22nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE) 2007

Abstract

Welcome to WEASELTech 2007, the 1st International ACM Workshop on Empirical Assessment of Software Engineering Languages and Technologies. WEASELTech '07 is held in conjunction with the 22nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE) 2007 in Atlanta Georgia on November 5th. Software-engineering research often involves new languages, notations, tools, and methods that a human designer or analyst uses to improve productivity, quality, etc. Inherent to any proposed tool, method, language, or notation is a claim that its use will benefit some development task. Ultimately, such claims must be validated empirically so that a practitioner, when looking to adopt a particular technique or tool, can make the choice based on rigorous scientific data. There are several different types of empirical study (e.g., surveys, case studies, and controlled experiments) each providing a different degree of strength and each appropriate to validate different kinds of empirical questions and contexts. Despite their importance, empirical studies of SE tools and approaches are rarely carried out, or at least rarely reported. Topics of interest include such things as case studies that apply a software-engineering tool or method to a realistically sized problem; controlled experiments that compare tools or methods with respect to some softwaredevelopment task; the usability of modeling languages and notations with respect to some task; and empirical studies that attempt to gauge the practical utility of automated verification tools. WEASELTech aims to bring together researchers and practitioners to share their experiences in evaluating an SE tool or method or artifacts that are used by a particular tool or method. WEASELTech received 15 manuscripts for review. These included industrial case studies, experience reports, and position papers. Each was reviewed by at least two members of the program and organizing committee. Of these submissions 11 were accepted for publication in the proceedings and inclusion in the technical program of the event.