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about us

Today's businesses, large and small, rely heavily on computers and computer programs (software). Highly reliable business systems are based on a still relatively new approach to developing software known as object technology. A well-defined strategy for using object technology has been shown to give competitive advantage in a wide range of businesses, including airline reservations, banking, stock markets and freight handling.

The Centre for Object Technology Applications and Research (COTAR) came into existence on 1 July 1994. From 1994 to early 1999, it ran with a wide brief - from 1994 to 1996 under the directorship of Professor Brian Henderson-Sellers. Following a sojourn in Melbourne establishing a sister organization, called COTAR (Victoria), Professor Henderson-Sellers was reappointed as COTAR Director in February 1999 at which time the first five-yearly review was being initiated. In 1999, the incoming Director had already stated that new directions were needed for COTAR, specifically a tighter focus, an extension to encompass component-based development (CBD) and web issues; thus a smaller group of academics and a new industry advisory board were needed. New initiatives in web development, organizational transition and requirements engineering metrics have been successfully taken.

By creating a critical mass of OT researchers, COTAR provides a focus and information centre in OT throughout New South Wales, through its interstate members and across the country. Advice is available on a wide range of issues from

• locating similar local industries in order to share experiences
• identifying appropriate management infrastructure
• identifying appropriate OO languages
• identifying appropriate OO methodology
• evaluating methodologies and CASE tools by hands-on experiential evaluation on Unix and DOS/Windows environments in one of the UTS laboratories, where experienced users will also be available to answer questions
• advice on migration paths
• advice on quality aspects of OT and its inter-relationship with quality management strategies such as Total Quality Management (TQM)
• unbiased vendor and product appraisals

mission statement

In line with UTS's Mission Statement committing the university to close interaction with industry, COTAR's mission is

• To foster collaboration and communication between universities and industry in order to accelerate the practical development of object technologies
• To provide an Australian research centre in object technology
• To provide quality professional development courses in object-oriented software engineering
• To provide an Australian focus for the dissemination to industry of leading-edge knowledge on object technology

objectives

The focus of COTAR is object technology: research issues and technology transfer. The Centre's objectives, which are in line with UTS's organizational objectives, are:

1. To promote and conduct research in object-oriented software engineering, object-oriented information systems and object-oriented computing
2. To provide a research training environment for postgraduate research studies and create new courses at the Masters' level
3. To provide a vehicle and focal point for collaborative work with industry
4. To collect, collate and disseminate to industry the growing body of knowledge on theoretical and practical aspects of object technology and its use in application-domain, industrial software development
5. To assist companies in their transition to object technology
6. To provide professional development education of a quality endorsable by the Australian Computer Society in their Practising Computer Professional (PCP) scheme

annual report

The biggest event involving COTAR in 2000 was the highly successful organization of the TOOLS (Technology of Object-Oriented Languages and Systems) international conference which was held in Sydney for the first time in nearly a decade. All the major roles were taken by COTAR members (Henderson-Sellers as Conference Co-Chair and Programme Chair; Low as Tutorials Chair; Lowe as Workshop Chair; Serour as Conference Co-Chair). The conference was hosted by COTAR and UTS at the Mercure Hotel in Broadway in November 2000 and attracted participants from 18 countries. As well as an academic stream of refereed papers, published in the Proceedings, it had three parallel streams of industry-focussed international and national speakers. Key names in OO/CBD such as Constantine, Firesmith, Mellor, Meyer, Du'e, Kruchten, Pradhan and Selic gave excellent presentations highly targetted at industry technology transfer - the main focus of COTAR itself.

Work initiated in 1999/2000 with Professors Opdahl (Norway) and Barbier (France) have continued apace subsequent to their extended visits to COTAR. These collaborations have proved most fruitful resulting in a number of journal and conference papers accepted and pending.

The work on the OPEN process continues successfully with additions of support for component-based development and web development. In addition, more and more industries are considering its adoption. A specific interest has been shown by the OO COBOL community and the COTAR Director has been invited to run the OO track at the international COBOL conference in the USA in 2001. The transition project with a Sydney based legal publisher has been successful with two COTAR members involved over a lengthy period (continuing into 2001).

A significant and new project in which COTAR is playing a leading role is the OOSPICE project. This is significantly funded by the European Union with members in Austria, Sweden and UK. COTAR and the Software Quality Institute in Brisbane are two full members of this project, although not funded from the EU. Australian funding is through ARC and DISR.

structure

Management Team

The management team comprises Professor Henderson-Sellers as Director of COTAR and the two Deputy Directors, Associate Professor David Lowe and Dr Didar Zowghi. They meet regularly each fortnight.

Industry Advisory Board

With the restructuring of COTAR in 2000, recommendations were made to the university for a complement of new members for the industry Advisory Board. We anticipate that these will be ratified and invited in 2001 so that new directions can be set in conjunction with their industry intelligence. The Board meets 2-3 times per year.

contact us

3 staff contact details:

Professor Brian Henderson-Sellers,
tel 02 9514 1687, email brian@it.uts.edu.au

Associate Professor David Lowe,
tel 02 9514 2526, email david.lowe@uts.edu.au

Dr Didar Zowghi,
tel 02 9514 1860, email didar@it.uts.edu.au

COTAR's address for general information

Faculty of Information Technology
University of Technology, Sydney
PO Box 123
Broadway
NSW 2007
Australia