ECOOP / Invited Talks

1. Built-in Object Security

Abstract

Modern programming languages and systems provide much support for security, through rich type systems, libraries for authentication and authorization, and several other features. In this talk we will consider the fundamental security properties built into languages, such as the unforgeability of object references, and the resulting problems. We will also discuss some of the extra security machinery present in execution environments; it is often regarded as an add-on, but it can have a substantial effect on language semantics - for better or for worse.

Invited Speaker: Martin Abadi

Martin Abadi is Professor of Computer Science at the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC). His research is mainly on computer and network security, programming languages, and specification and verification methods. He has contributed, for example, to the design and analysis of security protocols, to the foundations of object-oriented languages, and to temporal-logic verification techniques. He has served as program chair for the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, the IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Sience, and is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of the ACM, Information and Computation, and other journals. Prior to joining UCSC, he studied at Stanford University and worked at Digital's System Research Center and other research labs in industry.
His home page is at http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~abadi/home.html.

2. Open APIs for Embedded Systems

Abstract

Embedded computer control is increasingly common in appliances, vehicles, communication devices, medical instruments, and many other systems. Some embedded computer systems enable users to obtain their own programs from parties other than the maker of the device. For instance, PDAs and some cell phones offer an open application programming interface that enables users to better customize devices to their needs and support an industry of independent software vendors.
This kind of flexibility will be more difficult for other kinds of embedded devices where safety and security are a greater risk. This talk will discuss some of the benefits and requirements for open APIs for embedded systems and present case studies for open APIs for appliances and smart cards.

Invited Speaker: Carl Gunter

Dr. Gunter received his BA from the University of Chicago in 1979 and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1985. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Cambridge in England before joining the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in 1987, where he is now Professor of Computer and Information Science, Director of the Penn Security Lab, and Professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering. He does research and teaches at Penn in his areas of technical expertise: security, networks, programming languages, and software engineering. His work includes contributions to the foundations of programming languages, the design of functional and object-oriented programs, languages for networks and security, and software engineering. He has published over 60 papers in scientific forums, advised 7 Ph.D. theses, and authored an MIT Press textbook on the semantics of programming languages.
His home page is at http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~gunter/home.html.

3. XQuery: A Query Language for XML (or...Memoir of a W3C standards hacker)

Abstract

XML is a flexible data format that has rapidly become the lingua franca of data exchange between inter-enterprise applications on the Internet. Hundreds of industry-specific XML dialects already exist. Bioinformatics data, financial products, legal documents, medical transcripts, and electronic-commerce transactions are some examples of the diverse kinds of data that are exchanged in XML.
For the past three years, I have been a member of the World-Wide Web Consortium's XML Query Language working group, whose charter is to define XQuery, a standard query language for XML. In this talk, I will identify the characteristics of XML and the requirements of data-exchange applications that demand a new query language. I will describe how XQuery, a functional, strongly-typed query language, satisfies (most of) those requirements.
Along the way, I will identify several of the political, economic, and sociological factors that impact the development of a new industry standard.
[ A cast of thousands contribute to XQuery. I work most closely with Jerome Simeon and Phil Wadler. Together, we have an implementation of XQuery, called Galax (http://db.bell-labs.com/galax) that is based on the XQuery Formal Semantics. ]

Invited Speaker: Mary Fernández

Mary Fernández is Principal Technical Staff Member in Large-Scale Programming Research at AT&T Labs - Research. She received the Ph.D. in Computer Science from Princeton University in 1995. Her research interests include data integration, Web-site implementation and management, and domain-specific languages. Currently, she is working on query languages and storage systems for XML. She is a member of the W3C XML Query Language Working Group and is co-editor of the following W3C working drafts: the XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model, XPath 2.0, and the XQuery 1.0 Formal Semantics.
Her home page is at http://www.research.att.com/~mff/.