Object-oriented technology indisputably provided us with a better handle on complexity than previous technologies. Nevertheless, several issues remain and generative techniques - automated generation of software artifacts - may help us address them. Such issues include the performance and complexity overheads of highly flexible OO designs, and the inability to implement aspectual or even more abstract features such as performance properties in a localized and modular way.

The workshop aimed to bring together practitioners, researchers, academics, and students to discuss the state-of-the-art of generative techniques and their role in object-oriented development. The goal was to share experience, assess the state-of-the-art and the state-of-the-practice, consolidate successful techniques, and identify the most promising application areas and open issues for future work. Topics of interest included

• synergy between object-oriented technology, components and generative techniques
• styles of generators (application generators, generators based on XML technologies, template languages (e.g., JSP), template metaprogramming, transformational systems, intentional languages, aspects, subjects, etc), particularly their uses and limitations;
• design of APIs that supports generative techniques
• generation of code artifacts, such as application logic, UIs, database schemas, and middleware integration;
• generation of non-code artifacts such as test cases, documentation, tutorials, and help systems;
• capturing configuration knowledge, for example, in DSLs, and extensible languages;
• influence of generative techniques on software architecture (e.g., building and customizing frameworks and applying patterns);
• testing generic and generative models; and
• industrial applications of generative technology.

Potential participants were asked to submit a two-page (or longer) position paper detailing their experience with generative techniques, their perspective on one or more of the above topics, and their planned contribution to the workshop. We were looking for concrete case studies and potential topics of discussion in order to ground the workshop in real-world issues. Participants were expected to read all accepted position papers before the workshop. The workshop had 21 participants.

Object-oriented technology indisputably provided us with a better handle on complexity than previous technologies. However, several problem areas still exist and generative techniques may help us to address them; in particular, they can help us to

• avoid unnecessary overheads due to dynamic parameterization and configuration when used to implement variabilities in a system family
• implement highly abstract and flexible designs without incurring prohibitive performance and complexity overheads (e.g., from a heavy use of OO design patterns)
• implement aspectual and abstract features in a localized way
• retarget solutions for different platforms (different operating systems, middleware implementations, libraries, or even programming languages) in an efficient way (this idea has been recently popularized by the OMG initiative "Model-Driven Architecture").

Generative technology has been in practical use for decades (e.g., compiler development). However, developing new domain-specific languages (DSLs), application generators, and component generators has been extremely hard, requiring being knowledgeable and experienced both in language design and compiler development. Recent developments such as XML technologies and template metaprogramming revived the interest in generative techniques by making these techniques more accessible to developers.

The pro-and-contra session in the afternoon will include a 10 minute debate on each paper. We will need two volunteers per paper, one playing the proponent role and one playing the opponent role. You can think of this session as a kind of game and the roles are just roles to be played...

During each 10 minute pro-and-contra debate, the proponent and the opponent will give a two minute opening statement each and then they will exchange their pro and contra arguments on the approach presented in the paper being debated. If any of the volunteers runs out of arguments, he or she may ask the audience for some additional arguments. The debate will be closed by each of the volunteers by making constructive suggestions about how to improve the paper and/or which direction to explore in future work.

Please note that we will not be able to provide you with a printed copy of the papers at the workshop, so you should consider bringing you own printed copies or an electronic version on your laptop to the workshop.

In any case, in order to get most out of the workshop, all participants are expected to read all the papers in advance. During the 15 minute presentations, there is only enough time to present the main points of the paper. Presuming that you've read the papers, this should be enough.

The results of the workshop will be summarized in a workshop report to be published in the ECOOP workshop reader. The workshop report (with an appropriate copyright notice) and the position papers will be available form the workshop website after the workshop. The results will be also advertised at the webpage and mailing list of the working group on Generative and Component-Based Software Engineering of the German Computer Association (GI).

Krzysztof Czarnecki, DaimlerChrysler Research and Technology, Germany

Gregory Butler, Concordia University, Canada

Kasper Østerbye, IT University Copenhagen, Denmark

Lutz Roeder, Microsoft Corporation, USA

Bedir Tekinerdoğan, University of Twente, The Netherlands

Markus Völter, MATHEMA AG, Germany

Krzysztof Czarnecki is a researcher and consultant with the Software Technology Lab at DaimlerChrysler Research in Ulm, where he has been working on Generative Programming and its industrial application for over five years. He co-chaired the First International Symposium on Generative and Component-Based Software Engineering (GCSE99) and is one of the founding members of the working group on "Generative and Component-Based Software Engineering" within the "Gesellschaft für Informatik". He co-organized workshops on generative techniques at SPLC1, ECOOP01, and OOPSLA01, and co-authored the book "Generative Programming: Methods, Tools, and Applications" (Addison-Wesley, 2000).

Greg Butler is a Professor of Computer Science at Concordia University, Montreal. He works on frameworks and leads the Know-It-All project developing a framework for database management systems and investigating methodologies for framework development and evolution. He has participated in many workshops at OOPSLA and WISR, been on programme committees and local organization committees, and facilitated the same workshop at the First Software Product Line Conference.

Kasper Østerbye, IT University Copenhagen, Denmark, has worked with program understanding through programming language constructs and software documentation based on hypertext. Currently he is working on extensible languages, especially extensible syntax and static semantics.

Lutz Roeder, Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, USA, works on next generation component-based technologies. His main interests include extensible languages, active source and visual programming environments.

Markus Völter works as a software engineer and consultant for MATHEMA AG, Germany, where he also manages their Ulm office. His main interests include distributed systems, component technologies and patterns. Markus has published several papers in this area and he's a regular speaker at the respective conferences.