ChiliPLoP 2007 Hot Topic: 
Patterns of Fault Tolerant Software
Robert Hanmer   hanmer at acm.org

This ChiliPLoP Hot Topic will deal with the discussion, practical application, and refinement of the manuscript for a new book to be published by Wiley in 2007, “Patterns for Fault Tolerant Software”.

This new book presents proven techniques to achieve highly available, fault tolerant software that can be implemented by software developers, software architects and small teams. The techniques will be presented in the form of patterns as a resource for teaching developers and students about fault tolerance principles, and also as a reference for experts seeking to select the technique appropriate for a given system.

Within the phases of fault tolerance (error detection, error recovery and mitigation and fault treatment) the patterns will be organized in a way that leads from high-level abstractions to the concrete mechanisms. The collection of techniques will be programming language independent, and will be presented in a way that supports their working together to design fault tolerant software.  This allows the designer to build the fault tolerant pattern language needed to solve their unique design problems.

Readers will be guided from concepts and terminology, through common principles and methods to advanced techniques and practices in the development of software systems. References will provide access points to the key literature, including descriptions of exemplar applications of each technique. This book gives the system designer a toolbox of software fault tolerant techniques described in sufficient detail that it will allow the designer to tailor the techniques to meet particular system specifications.

The architect of fault tolerant systems will find an organized collection of software techniques, where they will be able to easily look up a specific technique and find sufficient details that would allow appropriate choices for the system being designed. In addition, the relations among the fault tolerance techniques, captured in the pattern language structure, will allow the architect to assemble their own tool chest of techniques appropriate for any design project.

One topic that this book will not include is reliability modeling and analysis.  This topic is widely covered in many other books.  This book’s focus is on the techniques that can lead to reliable software systems  
Goals of the Hot Topic
The primary goal is to conduct a thorough review of the manuscript using the Writers’ Workshop methodology.

This review will offer guidance to steer the final revisions of the manuscript.

Through the entire Hot Topic there will be a thought-provoking discussion and understanding of real-life applications and proven applications of the patterns.
Requirements
To participate fully, participants should be prepared to read the manuscript in advance of the conference and come prepared to discuss it in the form of a Writers’ Workshop. 

Prior experience with Writers’ Workshops will be useful, but is not required.

Experience with fault tolerant design is desired, but novices that are members of the target audience is important too.
Activities
Writers’ Workshops will be the primary event of this hot topic. Other activities will include brainstorming and design exercises to develop and explore examples of the patterns.

Important Dates
December 18, 2006:  Last day to request participation to  hanmer at acm.org
January 1, 2007:  Notification of participation.
January 19, 2007:  Manuscript for review distributed to participants.
Participants will be responsible for registering and traveling to ChiliPLoP.
February 18-21:  ChiliPLoP.
What's in it for me?
You might be asking why participate.  Here are a several benefits of participation:   This is a chance to participate in the review of a forthcoming book;  all participants will be mentioned in the acknowledgements.  It will also provide a chance to spend three days focused on patterns and well-designed, fault tolerant software. The ChiliPLoP community offers a chance to mingle with other pattern luminaries in a relaxed setting out of the Northern snows of February.