Megamodelling and Etymology

Is a model of a model, a metamodel? Is the relational model a metamodel? Is it a model? What is a component metamodel? Is it a model of a component model? The word MODEL is subject to a lot of debates in Model Driven Engineering. Add the notion of metamodel on top of it and you will just enter what some people call the Meta-muddle. Recently megamodels have been proposed to avoid the meta-muddle. This approach is very promising but it does not solve however the primary problem. That is, even a simple use of the word Model could lead to misunderstanding and confusion. This paper tackles this problem from its very source: the polysemic nature of the word MODEL. The evolution and semantic variations of the word MODEL are modelled from many different perspectives. This papers tells how the prefix MED in indo-european has lead, five millenniums after, to the acronym MDE, and this via the word MODEL. Based on an extensive study of encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, and etymological sources, it is shown that the many senses of the word MODEL can be clustered into four groups, namely model-as-representation, model-as-example, model-as-type, and model-as-mold. All these groups are fundamental to understand the real nature of Model Driven Engineering. Megamodels and Etymology are indeed keys to avoid the Meta-muddle.on

Model Driven Management of Complex Systems: Implementing the Macroscope\u27s vision

Several years ago, first generation model driven engineering (MDE) tools focused on generating code from high-level platform-independent abstract descriptions. Since then, the target scope of MDE has much broadened and now addresses for example testing, verification, measurement, tool interoperability, software evolution, and many more hard issues in software engineering. In this paper we study the applicability of MDE to another difficult problem: the management of complex systems. We show how the basic properties of MDE may be of significant help in this context and we characterize and extend MDE by the concept of a "megamodel", i.e. a model which elements may themselves be models. We sketch the basic characteristics of a tool for handling megamodels and we apply it to the example of the Eclipse.org ecosystem, chosen here as a representative illustration of a complex system. The paper finally discusses how the proposed original approach and tools may impact the construction and maintenance of computer based complex systems

Model driven product line engineering : core asset and process implications

Reuse is at the heart of major improvements in productivity and quality in Software Engineering. Both Model Driven Engineering (MDE) and Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) are software development paradigms that promote reuse. Specifically, they promote systematic reuse and a departure from craftsmanship towards an industrialization of the software development process. MDE and SPLE have established their benefits separately. Their combination, here called Model Driven Product Line Engineering (MDPLE), gathers together the advantages of both. Nevertheless, this blending requires MDE to be recasted in SPLE terms. This has implications on both the core assets and the software development process. The challenges are twofold: (i) models become central core assets from which products are obtained and (ii) the software development process needs to cater for the changes that SPLE and MDE introduce. This dissertation proposes a solution to the first challenge following a feature oriented approach, with an emphasis on reuse and early detection of inconsistencies. The second part is dedicated to assembly processes, a clear example of the complexity MDPLE introduces in software development processes. This work advocates for a new discipline inside the general software development process, i.e., the Assembly Plan Management, which raises the abstraction level and increases reuse in such processes. Different case studies illustrate the presented ideas.This work was hosted by the University of the Basque Country (Faculty of Computer Sciences). The author enjoyed a doctoral grant from the Basque Goverment under the “Researchers Training Program” during the years 2005 to 2009. The work was was co-supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education, and the European Social Fund under contracts WAPO (TIN2005-05610) and MODELINE (TIN2008-06507-C02-01)

Model-Driven Process Enactment for NFV Systems with MAPLE

The Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) advent is making way for the rapid deployment of network services (NS) for telecoms. Automation of network service management is one of the main challenges currently faced by the NFV community. Explicitly defining a process for the design, deployment, and management of network services and automating it is therefore highly desirable and beneficial for NFV systems. The use of model-driven orchestration means has been advocated in this context. As part of this effort to support automated process execution, we propose a process enactment approach with NFV systems as the target application domain. Our process enactment approach is megamodel-based. An integrated process modelling and enactment environment, MAPLE, has been built into Papyrus for this purpose. Process modelling is carried out with UML activity diagrams. The enactment environment transforms the process model to a model transformation chain, and then orchestrates it with the use of megamodels. In this paper we present our approach and environment MAPLE, its recent extension with new features as well as application to an enriched case study consisting of NS design and onboarding process.Comment: 27 pages, 14 figures, 1 tabl

Language Support for Megamodel Renarration

Megamodels may be difficult to understand because they reside at a high level of abstraction and they are graph-like structures that do not immediately provide means of order and decomposition as needed for successive examination and comprehension. To improve megamodel comprehension, we introduce modeling features for the recreation, in fact, renarration of megamodels. Our approach relies on certain operators for extending, instantiating, and otherwise modifying megamodels. We illustrate the approach in the context of megamodeling for Object/XML mapping (also known as XML data binding)

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

04101 Abstracts Collection -- Language Engineering for Model-Driven Software Development

From 29.02. to 05.03.04, the Dagstuhl Seminar 04101 ``Language Engineering for Model-Driven Software Development\u27\u27 was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available

08331 Abstracts Collection -- Perspectives Workshop: Model Engineering of Complex Systems (MECS)

From 10.08. to 13.08.2008, the Dagstuhl Seminar 08331 ``Perspectives Workshop: Model Engineering of Complex Systems (MECS)\u27\u27 was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available