The third edition of the Distributed Architecture modeling for Novel Component based Embedded systems (DANCE) event will be organized in conjunction with the 38th Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA)in Cesme, Izmir, Turkey, September 5-8, 2012 (http://seaa2012.ii.metu.edu.tr/). This year, the event is included in the principal conference as a special session of the MOCS track.

Distributed systems research covers a wide spectrum of applications
ranging across embedded real/time systems, commercial transaction
systems, transportation systems, and military/space systems. Such
systems raise several issues not found in single processor systems. The
main difficulty arises when considering dependability, security,
adaptability and resources constrained computing. This area requires
computing systems to run software in an efficient and trustworthy way.
That is, in order to be able to design complex architectures in
reasonable time, novel and effective design methodologies are needed to
automatically build applications from high-level descriptions to take
into account what needs to be deployed on hardware. To remedy this
weakness, combining both model and component seems to be a very
promising cocktail for building solutions to this problem.

The introduction of the component approach in the development of
embedded systems allows facilitating their design by building through an
assembly of existing components. Indeed, this approach provides a clear
separation between the specification and implementation of components.
Note however that in the context of component software, distributed
architecture is significantly more demanding than that of traditional
monolithic integrated solution. Model-driven engineering provides a very
useful contribution for the design of distributed systems since it
bridges the gap between design issues and implementation concerns. It
helps the designer to concentrate on application structure and required
behavior and it permits us to specify in a separate way non-functional
requirements such as underlying execution infrastructure/middleware,
dependability and reconfiguration issues that are very important to
guide the implementation process.

The main focus of DANCE is on the topic of making design and implementation expert knowledge available to distributed real time embedded systems (DRTES) engineering processes. Special emphasis will be devoted to promote discussion and interaction between researchers and practitioners focused on the particularly challenging task to
efficiently integrate dependability and reconfiguration solutions within the restricted available design space and time. Furthermore, one important focus is on the potential benefits of the combination of model- driven engineering with languages and representation of component engineering solutions. The workshop aims to bring together researchers from various fields involved in the development and deployment of
component in embedded systems with a particular focus on the transfer of results from fundamental research to the industrial development of energy, resource and time constrained applications. The exchange of concepts, prototypes, research ideas, and other results which contribute to the academic arena and also benefit business and industrial communities, is of particular interest. Some of the topics that we seek
to include in the workshop are related to the development of models and tools to support the inclusion of energy, resource and time constraints within dependability and reconfiguration requirements issues into the embedded systems engineering process.