Jean Bezivin
University of Nantes, France
Martin Gogolla
University of Bremen, Germany
Model Driven Architecture (MDA) is an OMG initiative that attempts to separate business functionality specification from the implementation of that functionality on specific middleware technological platforms (CORBA, C#/DotNet, Java/EJB, XML/SOAP, etc.). This new approach is intended to play a key role in the fields of information system and software engineering. MDA is supposed to provide a basic technical framework for information integration and tools interoperation based on the separation of platform specific models (PSMs) from platform independent models (PIMs). Models of low granularity and high abstraction will represent the various functional and non-functional aspects of computer systems. In the long term, there will be well-defined operations, implemented by commercial tools that will allow to build, transform, merge, verify, etc. these different models. Key standards in the MDA will be based on OMG recommendations like UML, MOF, XMI, CWM, etc.
We may presently observe rapid progresses towards a sound, homogeneous and solid set of engineering principles in the field of system and software construction and maintenance. The idea of models as first class elements is now becoming widely accepted. Probably the major evolution since last year WiSME'02 workshop in Dresden has been the recognition of an important corollary of this basic principle, namely that transformations are also models. As a concrete trace of this evolution, the ongoing OMG Request for Proposal for MOF/QVT (ako Unified Transformation Language) will hopefully allow to deal with queries, views and transformations on models in a highly regular and homogeneous way. Already present in other technological spaces (e.g. XSLT and XQuery for XML documents), this key part of the MDA framework and methodology is progressively but rapidly taking shape. This year WiSME'03 will try to focus even more on the emerging field of model transformation engineering. We envision a time when buying a platform (Windows, Unix, DotNet, EJB, CORBA, etc.) will mean not only getting the executable code for this platform, but also the generic and adaptable set of transformation tools allowing to generate code for this platform from standard PIM models. There is a need and probably a market for reusable and adaptable transformation components. Which precise form will this "transformation as assets" trend take? This is one of the exciting question that will have to be answered in the coming period.
The stage is thus set but the efforts to move from the present situation to the idyllic automatic generation of executable models for various platforms remains huge. We need to mobilize the creative energies of a very broad category of contributors, from tool builders to theoretical specialists in the fields of language compilers, graph rewriting, model checking, ontology engineering, etc. We need to bring together young researchers planning to invest in this emerging new area as well as more experienced professional having previous experience in areas related to automatic code generation, transformational and generative approaches, model checking, etc.
The workshop is intended to bring together practitioners and theoretically oriented researchers interested in the short, medium and long term issues of the MDA.
The following is a non-exhaustive list of subjects:
Participants are invited to provide a contributing paper of approximately 4 to 8 pages not later than July 7, 2003. Invitations to participate will be sent before July 21, 2003, based on the evaluation of the contribution by members of the selection committee. The contributions should be sent as PDF files to both organizers:
Jean.Bezivin@sciences.univ-nantes.fr
gogolla@informatik.uni-bremen.de
Workshop date: October 21st, 2003 Submission date: July 7th, 2003 Date of acceptance: July 21st, 2003 Full paper: August 31st, 2003
http://www.metamodel.com/wisme-2003/
This will be a full day workshop. All the papers will be made available to participants before the workshop. During the morning and first part of the afternoon, selected participants will present a brief description of their work (15 minutes). This will be followed by a question and answer session. At the end of the day, a number of important issues raised during the presentations and discussion will be identified and elaborated. The objective is to present a list of open problems that need to be resolved to ensure the success of the MDA initiative. Special emphasis will be put this year on the possible industrial convergence on standardization of model transformation notations and frameworks.
We plan to collect the papers in proceedings that will be first published as a technical report.
Attendance will be limited to ~35 participants by invitation only. Participants must submit a short (4-8 pages) position paper. Accepted papers should be extended to a full paper (no more than 5000 words) that will be made available to each participant before the workshop.