Student Conference on Software Engineering and Database Systems

Course Organization

Lecturer:	Gunter Saake, Martin Kuhlemann, Sandro Schulze, Marko Rosenmüller
Credits:	6 Credit Points
Module:	Course for the Module "Schlüssel-und Methodenkompetenzen" of Master programs; "Seminar" for Diplom programs. This course is alternative to "Schlüsselkompetenzen III" (pick either, you cannot get credit for both) Only in German: module description
Schedule:	Lectures on Friday 15:00 - 16:30, Room G29-K059 (not every week, see below) Full day seminar, simulating a real conference, at the end of the semester First Lecture on April 8. Please register via email to sanschul@iti.cs.uni-magdeburg.de before.
Language:	The full course will be held in English. Papers and presentations have to be in English as well.

Lecture shifted from June 17 to June 24

Target Audience

The course is intended for graduate students who intend to pursue an academic career, primarily at Master students and PhD students (in the first year of the PhD). Diploma students may participate for a Seminar-Schein, but should be advised that this is designed as a 6 CP course, so the effort will be significantly higher than in a normal Seminar course (but you will also receive much more feedback). We only recommend this for Diploma students if you consider to continue in a PhD position or want to practice academic writing in English for your thesis.

All participants should be interested in academic research and in practicing academic writing.

Although PhD students will not receive a grade or schein, we encourage them to participate in this course to practice academic writing and to prepare a paper for their own research project  (to be sent to another conference or workshop or to be published as a technical report).

Course Goals

The participating students will simulate a scientific conference to acquire skills required for ...

• ... writing academic papers
• ... participating in a conference
• ... reviewing academic papers of others
• ... organizing a conference
• ... using web-based paper submission and review systems

Course Structure

In summary, you will have to write a paper (with two chances to improve it after the initial version), write reviews (two review rounds with 3 reviews each), and present your work (a short initial presentation, a practice presentation, and a final presentation).

The course consists of a lecture on Fridays that introduces topics such as academic writing, research ethics, organizing a conference, and presentation. The main focus will be on writing an own academic paper, reviewing papers by others, and presenting your results in front of the group.

• Every participant writes an academic paper, typically giving an overview of the current state and future challenges of a selected research area from software engineering or database systems. We are open for a wide range of topics, that can align with other research projects (e.g., part of PhD research or preparation for a Diploma or Master's thesis). 
• Every participant presents his topic (and relevant literature) in a short presentation, for first feedback.
• After about six weeks, every participant submits a first version of his/her paper, which is subsequently reviewed by at least 3 other participants.
• Another two or three days layer, an improved version of the paper based on the reviewers comments is submitted and subsequently reviewed again.
• The paper can be improved again. A final version is submitted (and graded) at the end of the semester.
• All papers are presented in a conference. This conference will take place on a whole day near the end of the semester (July or August, date will be discussed in lectures). Before the conference, every participant will practice their presentation and get feedback from the others for possible improvements.

Although there are relatively few lectures, we expect that participants focus on reading, writing, reviewing and presentation and we recommend that you reserved at least one day per week (6 CP = 180h = ca. 12 hours per week). 

The course will be graded based on the final version of the paper, the reviews and the presentation.

Preliminary Schedule

(The specific dates may change. We will fix the date for the final presentations in the first lectures.)

Lectures:

• April 8: Introduction and topic selection
• Adam Sowinski - CSaFC in Column Storage and Compression
• Alexander Kusz - CSaFC in Software Product Line Testing
• Daniel Lüddecke - CSaFC in Column Storage and Self-Tuning
• Daniel Zehe - CSaFC of Flash-Based DBMS
• Marco Fischer - CSaFC in Refactoring with the Feature Aggregator
• Matthias Koch - CSaFC for Tuning by Physical DBMS Design
• Michael Boldau - CSaFC in Tailor-Made Data Management
• Simon Struck - CSaFC in Verification of Feature-Oriented Software Product Lines
• Steven Boehlert - CSaFC in Verification of Preprocessor-Based Software Product Lines
• Henning Steinhorst - CSaFC in DB Schema Evolution
• Maik Mory - CSaFC in Decoration of OpenGL Renderers
• Ziqiang Diao - Transaction Support for Cloud Computing
• April 15/29 and May 6: Lecture: Academic writing I (structure, getting started, style basics, references)
• April 29: Short presentation of topic and relevant literature (5 min)
• May 6: Lecture: Publication process (conferences, journals, reviews, how to select a venue, ...)
• May 13: Lecture: Academic writing II (clarity, cohesion, patterns, typical problems)
• May 27: Lecture: Research ethics (safeguarding good scientific practice, scientific misconduct, plagiarism, ...)
• June 3rd & June 10th: No lecture
• June 17: visiting the PhD defence of Marko Rosenmüller (G29-301)
• June 24: Lecture: Presentation
• July 1: Practice Presentation I
• Maik Mory - CSaFC in Decoration of OpenGL Renderers
• Simon Struck - CSaFC in Verification of Feature-Oriented Software Product Lines
• Steven Boehlert - CSaFC in Verification of Preprocessor-Based Software Product Lines
• Alexander Kusz - CSaFC in Software Product Line Testing
• Marco Fischer - CSaFC in Refactoring with the Feature Aggregator
• July 8: Practice Presentation II
• Ziqiang Diao - Transaction Support for Cloud Computing
• Adam Sowinski - CSaFC in Column Storage and Compression
• Daniel Lüddecke - CSaFC in Column Storage and Self-Tuning
• Matthias Koch - CSaFC for Tuning by Physical DBMS Design
• Daniel Zehe - CSaFC of Flash-Based DBMS
• July 22: Final presentation

Deadlines:

• May 13: Submission of first draft due
  online submission via easyChair (if you have no account please register first on the linked page)
• May 24: First review due
• June 27: Submission second draft due
• July 4: Second review due
• July 27: Submission of final version due

Other

Format Instructions: IEEE CS Two Column Format

Latex users, use setting

\documentclass[10pt, conference, compsocconf]{IEEEtran}

Topics of interest

Topics for own academic papers will be proposed before the course starts. Topics should be specific research topics from the area of software engineering or database systems. They include, but are not limited to

• Software product lines
• Aspect-orientation and feature interaction
• Adaptive Systems
• Patterns and frameworks
• Software requirements engineering
• Software architecture and design
• Software components and reuse
• Formal Verification of Software Product Lines
• Testing of Software Product Lines
• Reverse engineering and maintenance
• Program comprehension and visualization
• Software economics and metrics
• Agile software development
• Engineering of embedded and real-time software

• Embedded Data Management
• Self-Tuning
• Data Models and Languages
• Database Indexing and Search
• Database Performance and Evaluation
• Engine-based Views, Replication, and Caching
• Image, Text, and Multimedia Databases
• Data Design, Evolution and Migration
• Heterogeneous and Federated DBMS (Interoperability)
• Column stores and Self-Tuning/Compression 
• Physical Design for DBMS