European Joint Conferences on
Theory and Practice of Software

This page is obsolete. Look here for information on ETAPS.

Background

The situation with European spring conferences on theory and practice of software science is widely regarded as unsatisfactory. Until now, there has been no single event to compare with big U.S. conferences such as POPL. The result has been poor conference attendance and too much competition by the various small conferences for good papers. These points were made in a widely-circulated message by Reinhard Wilhelm in 1992, and by others elsewhere. In the mid-1990's, partly prompted by plans to end the long-running CAAP conference, time seemed ripe for reorganization and consolidation.

Discussions

Following a discussion on this matter during the TAPSOFT'95 programme committee meeting, a concrete proposal was formulated. There was then a discussion on the basis of this proposal on 25th May at TAPSOFT'95 in Aarhus, preceded and followed by e-mail discussion. A consensus seemed to emerge that a single annual joint conference on Theory and Practice of Software Science should be established in the slot that has been occupied by CAAP/ESOP/CC in even years and TAPSOFT in odd years, comprising a number of existing and new conferences and covering a spectrum from theory to practice. A transcript of all the e-mail discussions, which includes summaries of the two face-to-face discussions, can be found here.

The Future

The title of the new annual joint conference is: European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software (acronym: ETAPS). Its first instance was held on 30th March - 3rd April 1998 in Lisbon, organized by José Fiadeiro of the University of Lisbon. The ETAPS steering committee is currently discussing plans for ETAPS'99 and beyond.

Detailed plans for ETAPS and its constituent events are here.

The call for papers for ETAPS'99 is here.

ETAPS'98 and ETAPS'99 are supported by a grant from the EU's programme on Training and Mobility of Researchers.

The last CAAP/ESOP/CC was held in Linköping in April 1996. The last TAPSOFT, which included the final instance of CAAP, was held in Lille in April 1997.



Don Sannella (dts@dcs.ed.ac.uk)