The 3rd Workshop on
Adaptive and Reflective Middleware

Most of the middleware used and developed today is characterised by its inflexibility in adapting to different target environments and application areas. This lack of adaptability usually comes from the fact that middleware is traditionally built as a single monolithic entity. This inflexibility usually can be characterised by either the inability to adapt the behaviour of the platform, the inability to adapt its structure, or even both. In application domains such as mobile computing, distributed multimedia, and distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) systems, where resources are both constrained and variable in time, having the ability to reconfigure the middleware in order to optimise the resource usage and/or provide the desired quality of service (QoS) becomes a key feature. Applying reflective techniques to middleware in order to "open up" the implementation, is one of the ways to provide a greater degree of configurability and dynamic adaptability at the middleware level. In the past few years, researchers have been experimenting with the use of reflection, component-based software engineering, software architecture design patterns and component frameworks, to achieve these goals.

Following the success of the past two workshops, RM2004 aims at providing researchers with a leading edge view on the state of the art in reflective and adaptive middleware, and with the challenging problems that remain unsolved. This workshop permits researchers from around the world investigating middleware adaptation to interact and share ideas. It will provide the platform to further the application of adaptive middleware techniques to a variety of domains, such as medicine, command and control, homeland security, entertainment and commerce.

All workshop papers will be published via ACM's Digital Library. By combining both the attendees voting and the referees' rankings, The following two papers are selected and extended version of the papers are published in the .IEEE Distributed Systems Online.

• Nico Janssens, Wouter Joosen, Pierre Verbaeten. "NeCoMan: Middleware for Safe Distributed-Service Adaptation in Programmable Networks." IEEE Distributed Systems Online, vol. 06, no. 7, July, 2005.
• Matthieu Leclercq, Vivien Quéma, Jean-Bernard Stefani. "DREAM: A Component Framework for Constructing Resource-Aware, Configurable Middleware" IEEE Distributed Systems Online, vol. 6, no. 9, September, 2005.