Ernst Denert Award for Software Engineering 2019

This open access book provides an overview of the dissertations of the five nominees for the Ernst Denert Award for Software Engineering in 2019. The prize, kindly sponsored by the Gerlind & Ernst Denert Stiftung, is awarded for excellent work within the discipline of Software Engineering, which includes methods, tools and procedures for better and efficient development of high quality software. An essential requirement for the nominated work is its applicability and usability in industrial practice. The book contains five papers describing the works by Sebastian Baltes (U Trier) on Software Developers’Work Habits and Expertise, Timo Greifenberg’s thesis on Artefaktbasierte Analyse modellgetriebener Softwareentwicklungsprojekte, Marco Konersmann’s (U Duisburg-Essen) work on Explicitly Integrated Architecture, Marija Selakovic’s (TU Darmstadt) research about Actionable Program Analyses for Improving Software Performance, and Johannes Späth’s (Paderborn U) thesis on Synchronized Pushdown Systems for Pointer and Data-Flow Analysis – which actually won the award. The chapters describe key findings of the respective works, show their relevance and applicability to practice and industrial software engineering projects, and provide additional information and findings that have only been discovered afterwards, e.g. when applying the results in industry. This way, the book is not only interesting to other researchers, but also to industrial software professionals who would like to learn about the application of state-of-the-art methods in their daily work

Role-Modeling in Round-Trip Engineering for Megamodels

Software is becoming more and more part of our daily life and makes it easier, e.g., in the areas of communication and infrastructure. Model-driven software development forms the basis for the development of software through the use and combination of different models, which serve as central artifacts in the software development process. In this respect, model-driven software development comprises the process from requirement analysis through design to software implementation. This set of models with their relationships to each other forms a so-called megamodel. Due to the overlapping of the models, inconsistencies occur between the models, which must be removed. Therefore, round-trip engineering is a mechanism for synchronizing models and is the foundation for ensuring consistency between models. Most of the current approaches in this area, however, work with outdated batch-oriented transformation mechanisms, which no longer meet the requirements of more complex, long-living, and ever-changing software. In addition, the creation of megamodels is time-consuming and complex, and they represent unmanageable constructs for a single user. The aim of this thesis is to create a megamodel by means of easy-to-learn mechanisms and to achieve its consistency by removing redundancy on the one hand and by incrementally managing consistency relationships on the other hand. In addition, views must be created on the parts of the megamodel to extract them across internal model boundaries. To achieve these goals, the role concept of Kühn in 2014 is used in the context of model-driven software development, which was developed in the Research Training Group 'Role-based Software Infrastructures for continuous-context-sensitive Systems.' A contribution of this work is a role-based single underlying model approach, which enables the generation of views on heterogeneous models. Besides, an approach for the synchronization of different models has been developed, which enables the role-based single underlying model approach to be extended by new models. The combination of these two approaches creates a runtime-adaptive megamodel approach that can be used in model-driven software development. The resulting approaches will be evaluated based on an example from the literature, which covers all areas of the work. In addition, the model synchronization approach will be evaluated in connection with the Transformation Tool Contest Case from 2019

From App Builders to App Editors

OutSystems provides a model-driven development and delivery platform aided by a rich visual environment, allowing developers to create enterprise-grade web and mobile applications. Until recently, most of this development capability came from Service Studio, the platform’s Integrated Development Environment (IDE), with which developers can quickly design a fully-fledged application. Nevertheless, in recent times the company has strived to offer a new collection of tools more focused on specific aspects of application development. The builders are tools that allow for non-IT related users to generate complete software solutions, with a small number of interactions, therefore reducing complexities correlated with the assembly of multiple-layer applications. Currently, there are two builders generally available: the Experience Builder providing greater focus towards the initial User Experience (UX) development, and theWorkflow Builder, associated with the design of task management and automation applications. Even though the OutSystems platform allows the combined use of the builders with Service Studio, currently this compatibility is unidirectional. That is, an application created using the Experience Builder, for instance, can be edited in the IDE but the inverse process is not possible. More specifically this shortcoming precludes a builder to update an application created or edited with any OutSystems tool. This substantially damages the chance for collaboration between different types of users employing different Out- Systems tools. The present dissertation sets as its paramount objective the enabling of different personas, both business and tech-oriented, to collaborate on the development of an enterprise-level application, employing the entire set of tools provided by the platform. From a more detailed standpoint, this work consists in the development of necessary model transformations proficient in supporting continuous and collaborative interoperability. Hence, this dissertation aims to expand the reach of the OutSystems product line, but also, from an academic standpoint, it hopes to provide a useful contribution to Model Driven Engineering and model transformations, advancing the state-of-the-art.A OutSystems fornece uma plataforma de desenvolvimento e entrega, orientada ao modelo e suportada num ambiente visual rico, permitindo aos seus programadores criarem aplicações móveis e web de nível empresarial. Durante vários anos, grande parte desta capacidade de desenvolvimento resultava do uso do Service Studio, o Integrated Development Environment da plataforma, capaz de rapidamente construir uma aplicação na sua plenitude. Ainda assim, nos últimos tempos a companhia empenhou-se em oferecer uma nova coleção de ferramentas, mais focadas em aspetos específicos do desenvolvimento aplicacional. Os builders, são então ferramentas que possibilitam que utilizadores não associados a áreas de IT possam gerar soluções completas de software atráves de um número reduzido de interações, conseguindo assim minorar complexidades correlacionadas com a montagem de múltiplas camadas aplicacionais. Atualmente, existem dois builders disponíveis para o público: o Experience Builder orientado ao desenvolvimento da User Experience (UX), o Workflow Builder, associado ao design de aplicações associadas a processos de gestão e automação de tarefas. Embora a plataforma OutSystems permita o uso combinado dos builders com o Service Studio, atualmente esta compatibilidade verifica-se como unidirecional. Isto é, uma aplicação criada no Experience Builder, por exemplo, pode ser editada no IDE, mas o processo inverso não é possível. Esta limitação impede um builder de atualizar uma aplicação criada ou editada utilizando uma qualquer ferramenta OutSystems. Isto prejudica substancialmente a colaboração entre diferentes tipos de utilizadores que empreguem diferentes ferramentas OutSystems. A presente tese define como objectivo principal capacitar diferentes personas não só orientadas ao negócio como às tecnologias, com a possibilidade de colaborar no desenvolvimento de uma aplicação de nível empresarial, podendo, para isso, utilizar a totalidade de ferramentas fornecidas pela plataforma. De um ponto de vista mais detalhado, este trabalho irá consistir no desenvolvimento das transformações de modelo necessárias para o suporte do desenvolvimento contínuo e colaborativo que se pretende. Deste modo, esta tese não só tem como propósito a expansão do alcance da linha de produtos OutSystems, como de um ponto de vista academico, pretende contibuir utilmente para o paradigma da Model Driven Engineering e das transformações de modelos, avançando assim o estado da arte

1st doctoral symposium of the international conference on software language engineering (SLE) : collected research abstracts, October 11, 2010, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

The first Doctoral Symposium to be organised by the series of International Conferences on Software Language Engineering (SLE) will be held on October 11, 2010 in Eindhoven, as part of the 3rd instance of SLE. This conference series aims to integrate the different sub-communities of the software-language engineering community to foster cross-fertilisation and strengthen research overall. The Doctoral Symposium at SLE 2010 aims to contribute towards these goals by providing a forum for both early and late-stage Ph.D. students to present their research and get detailed feedback and advice from researchers both in and out of their particular research area. Consequently, the main objectives of this event are: – to give Ph.D. students an opportunity to write about and present their research; – to provide Ph.D. students with constructive feedback from their peers and from established researchers in their own and in different SLE sub-communities; – to build bridges for potential research collaboration; and – to foster integrated thinking about SLE challenges across sub-communities. All Ph.D. students participating in the Doctoral Symposium submitted an extended abstract describing their doctoral research. Based on a good set of submisssions we were able to accept 13 submissions for participation in the Doctoral Symposium. These proceedings present final revised versions of these accepted research abstracts. We are particularly happy to note that submissions to the Doctoral Symposium covered a wide range of SLE topics drawn from all SLE sub-communities. In selecting submissions for the Doctoral Symposium, we were supported by the members of the Doctoral-Symposium Selection Committee (SC), representing senior researchers from all areas of the SLE community.We would like to thank them for their substantial effort, without which this Doctoral Symposium would not have been possible. Throughout, they have provided reviews that go beyond the normal format of a review being extra careful in pointing out potential areas of improvement of the research or its presentation. Hopefully, these reviews themselves will already contribute substantially towards the goals of the symposium and help students improve and advance their work. Furthermore, all submitting students were also asked to provide two reviews for other submissions. The members of the SC went out of their way to comment on the quality of these reviews helping students improve their reviewing skills

1st doctoral symposium of the international conference on software language engineering (SLE) : collected research abstracts, October 11, 2010, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

The first Doctoral Symposium to be organised by the series of International Conferences on Software Language Engineering (SLE) will be held on October 11, 2010 in Eindhoven, as part of the 3rd instance of SLE. This conference series aims to integrate the different sub-communities of the software-language engineering community to foster cross-fertilisation and strengthen research overall. The Doctoral Symposium at SLE 2010 aims to contribute towards these goals by providing a forum for both early and late-stage Ph.D. students to present their research and get detailed feedback and advice from researchers both in and out of their particular research area. Consequently, the main objectives of this event are: – to give Ph.D. students an opportunity to write about and present their research; – to provide Ph.D. students with constructive feedback from their peers and from established researchers in their own and in different SLE sub-communities; – to build bridges for potential research collaboration; and – to foster integrated thinking about SLE challenges across sub-communities. All Ph.D. students participating in the Doctoral Symposium submitted an extended abstract describing their doctoral research. Based on a good set of submisssions we were able to accept 13 submissions for participation in the Doctoral Symposium. These proceedings present final revised versions of these accepted research abstracts. We are particularly happy to note that submissions to the Doctoral Symposium covered a wide range of SLE topics drawn from all SLE sub-communities. In selecting submissions for the Doctoral Symposium, we were supported by the members of the Doctoral-Symposium Selection Committee (SC), representing senior researchers from all areas of the SLE community.We would like to thank them for their substantial effort, without which this Doctoral Symposium would not have been possible. Throughout, they have provided reviews that go beyond the normal format of a review being extra careful in pointing out potential areas of improvement of the research or its presentation. Hopefully, these reviews themselves will already contribute substantially towards the goals of the symposium and help students improve and advance their work. Furthermore, all submitting students were also asked to provide two reviews for other submissions. The members of the SC went out of their way to comment on the quality of these reviews helping students improve their reviewing skills

Implicit Incremental Model Analyses and Transformations

When models of a system change, analyses based on them have to be reevaluated in order for the results to stay meaningful. In many cases, the time to get updated analysis results is critical. This thesis proposes multiple, combinable approaches and a new formalism based on category theory for implicitly incremental model analyses and transformations. The advantages of the implementation are validated using seven case studies, partially drawn from the Transformation Tool Contest (TTC)