MIDDLEWARE

This workshop is the fifth in a highly successful series (the prior incarnations were RMW00, RMW03, RMW04, and ARM05). The early workshops in the series focused on reflective techniques to "open up" the middleware implementation, thereby allowing programmers to better configure and adapt middleware services for each application. The success of this approach has been clear. For example, Marc Fleury, in his Middleware 2003 keynote, recognized reflective middleware as a strong influence on the commercially successful JBoss platform. Subsequently, the name of the workshop was changed in 2005 to "adaptive and reflective middleware" in recognition of the increasing importance of run-time adaptivity as evidenced, for example, in the autonomic computing initiative.The specific goal of the present workshop, ARM06, is to continue to broaden this theme by bringing together a wider group of researchers that are involved in designing adaptive and reflective systems at different system layers, including architectural, application, OS and network layers. This has arisen from a recognition that adaptivity and reflection are of inherently system-wide applicability and cross-cut traditional software engineering and system demarcations.In addition, we wanted to further broaden the scope of the workshop on the following two fronts: First, we wanted to consider a broader range of techniques that expand current work on software componentization and design patterns in support of adaptation - prime examples are: software architecture; design patterns; aspect orientation; and control theory. And, second, we wanted to recognize the current strong trends towards decentralized and diverse environments, including: peer-to-peer platforms; network-centric systems; grid computing; sensor networks; and pervasive and mobile applications. This essentially implies considering domain-specific adaptation approaches (e.g. adaptive fault-tolerance in peer-to-peer platforms).<B>ARM'06</B>The papers submitted to the workshop reflected this broadening, and from the high-quality pool of submissions it was possible to put together a diverse and stimulating programme which should lead to interesting and productive discussions.As in previous years, we have organized the workshop as a series of sessions, each devoted to the presentation of papers belonging to a common theme. Furthermore, we have retained the unique feature of this workshop series in ending each session with a "mini-panel" involving the presenters, led by the session chair and a pre-selected "devil's advocate". This format has been found in the past workshops to lead to lively and productive discussion. We also included a session of posters to provide a showcase for new work that was as yet insufficiently mature for formal presentation.