International Workshop
on Model Engineering

Tuesday June 13, 2000

Nice / Sophia Antipolis, France

Conference: http://ecoop2000.unice.fr
Workshop: http://www.metamodel.com/IWME00

---

Go to workshop program.

Go to list of workshop participants

Go to list of primary issues facing Model Engineering as idenfied by the workshop

Co-organizers:

• Jean Bézivin <Jean.Bezivin@sciences.univ-nantes.fr>
  Université de Nantes, France
• Johannes Ernst <jernst@aviatis.com>
  Aviatis Corp., Campbell, CA, USA

Program committee:

• Colin Atkinson, IESE, Kaiserslautern, Germany
• Philip Bernstein, Microsoft, Redmond, USA
• Jean Bézivin, University of Nantes, France
• Steve Brodsky, IBM, USA                                  
• Jean Charlet, DSI/AP-HP, Paris, France
• Johannes Ernst, Aviatis Corp., USA
• Nicola Guarino, CNR, Italy
• Shridar Iyenghar, Unisys, USA
• Philippe Laublet, CAMS, Université Paris-Sorbonne, France
• Joaquin Miller, EDS E. Solutions Technology, USA
• Kerry Raymond, DSTC, Sydney, Australia

Presentation:

The move from procedural technology to object technology may have triggered a more radical change in our way of considering information systems and of conducting software engineering operations. One of the possible evolution paths is called model engineering. It consists in giving a first-class status to models and model elements, similarly to the first class status that was given to objects at the beginning of the object technology era. 

We face today a multiplicity of models. The information engineer or the software engineer are usually working with several different ones at the same time, i.e. with models of different semantics. The executable source code is no more the main and central reference. Product models are arranged in complex organization networks. They are produced and used in precise methodological frameworks, sometimes themselves defined by other models (process models).

The task of building systems from components is becoming more and more difficult. One of the reasons for this increasing complexity lies in the heterogeneous nature of the run-time and development-time attributes to be taken into account: control flow, data flow, architecture, deployment, requirements, know-how, QoS, test, etc. The promises for unification and simplicity made by object technologists in the late eighties seem to have fallen short. Model engineering now represents one potential answer to master system complexity and it is the purpose of the present workshop to investigate this possibility.

Submission format and procedure:

Participants are invited to provide a contributing paper of approximately 4 to 8 pages not later than March 31, 2000 (firm deadline). Invitations to participate will be sent before April 14, 2000, based on the evaluation of the contribution by members of the selection committee. The contributions should be sent as Postscript, Word or PDF files to the two organizers:

Jean.Bezivin@sciences.univ-nantes.fr
jernst@aviatis.com

List of topics:

• Models and ontologies;
• Meta-modeling frameworks (MOF, OIM, CDIF, etc.);
• Alignment, interoperability and integration issues for models; Correspondence across various formalisms (e.g. UML, SDL, STEP/EXPRESS, etc.);
• Process engineering (workflow, software process, etc.);
• Relationships between models of processes and models of products; Static and dynamic aspects in modeling;
• Executability of models (enactment, operationalization, etc.); Action languages; Possible relations to automatic code generation;
• Models of objects and models of components (e.g. Java Beans, EJB, Corba Model of Components, etc.);
• Models of legacy systems and their integration; Reverse engineering and Round-trip engineering; Integration of object models and non-object models.
• Models of test, models of QoS, software measurement models;
• Transformation systems for models;
• Representation systems for models (e.g. XML-based: XMI, XIF, etc.);
• Reflectivity in meta-model architectures;
• Modularity aspects for model organization: profiles, packages, name spaces, viewpoints, contexts, etc.; Issues of granularity for models;
• Meta-data and repositories. Middleware-supported model engineering (e.g. CORBA);
• Requirement modeling (e.g. Use Cases); Know-how modeling (e.g. Patterns); Architecture modeling (e.g. Frameworks, ADLs);
• Co-evolution of business models and computer system models;
• Model validation, verification; Analysabilty of models;
• Place of UML, OCL, MOF, XMI and similar proposals in modern model engineering;

The workshop will address questions like:

• Are modeling formalisms really NGLs (Next Generation Language)?
• Will modelers replace programmers?
• How can models contribute to the engineering of real systems?
• Whether models are primary a tool for communicating among people who are building systems or whether models can really contribute today to build directly all or parts of systems (through some sort of automated generation)?

Note on the venue:

The workshop session will take place in Sophia Antipolis Science Park while the venue for the main conference will be the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, the very same place where the Cannes Film Festival is held every year. The Palais des Festivals lies within walking distance of the city center and a range of comfortable hotels. All participants to the workshop will have to register for the main ECOOP conference.

Model engineering:

Some information on model engineering may be found here.