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CALL FOR PAPERS

FlexMDE 2015 - Flexible MDE Workshop
(previously Extreme Modeling Workshop (XM))
http://www.di.univaq.it/flexmde/

Ottawa, Canada
September 29, 2015
Co-located with MODELS'15
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OVERVIEW
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Increasingly, models are starting to become commonplace and Model Driven
Engineering (MDE) is gaining acceptance in many domains including
automotive, aerospace, railways, telecommunications, business
applications, and financial organizations.

Over the last years, several modeling platforms have been developed to
simplify and automate many steps of MDE processes. However, still
several challenges have to be solved in order to enable a wider adoption
of MDE technologies. One of the most important impediments in adopting
MDE tools is related to the reduced flexibility of existing modeling
platforms that do not permit to relax or enforce their rigidity
depending on the stages of the applied development process. For
instance, EMF does not permit to enter models which are not conforming
to a metamodel: on one hand it allows only valid models to be defined,
on the other hand it makes the corresponding pragmatics more difficult.
In this respect, there is a wide range of equally useful artefacts
between the following extremes:

- diagrams informally sketched on paper with a pencil
- models entered in a given format into a generic modeling platform,
e.g., Ecore/EMF

At the moment, modeling platforms encompasses only the latter
possibility. However, while depending on the stage of the process it
makes sense to start with something closer to the former (to promote
communication among stakeholders) to eventually end up with the latter
(to allow automatic model processing and code generation). Thus, we are
interested in exploring the possible forms of flexibility that are
required when applying MDE processes, ranging from agile ways to develop
modeling artifacts and languages to their flexible in concrete
application domains.

Flexibility is also needed to enable wider possibilities for reusing MDE
artefacts, like model transformations and code generators. In
particular, to deal with the growing complexity of software systems, it
is necessary to enforce consistent reuse and leverage the
interconnection of the modeling artifacts that are produced and consumed
during the different phases of the applied development processes. In
such contexts, modularization mechanisms have to be devised in order to
enable the development of complex modeling artifacts from smaller ones,
which are easier to process and reuse.

TOPICS
-------------------

There is an increasing need for more disciplined techniques and
engineering tools to support flexibility in several forms in a wide
range of modeling activities, including metamodel, model, and model
transformation definition processes. The workshop would aim at:

- better identifying the difficulties in the current practice of MDE
related to the lack of flexibility, and
- soliciting contributions of ideas, concepts, and techniques also
from other areas of software development.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to enhancing
flexibility in some aspect of MDE:

* Techniques for flexible meta-modelling and flexible typing
- Flexible metamodelling techniques: less static, more flexible
- Model typing
- Metamodelling by example, bottom-up metamodeling
- Support for generic programming techniques in MDE
- Dynamic typing techniques in MDE
- Multilevel metamodeling
- Typing inconsistency management
- Partial typing, multiple typings
- Constructive (top-down) and exploratory (bottom-up) modes for model typing
- Metamodelling paradigms: multilevel, two-level, archetype-based, ...

* Techniques for flexible modelling
- Model sketching
- Model abstraction
- Techniques for embedding domain specific languages in a combined language
- Modelling using mobile devices

* Flexible reutilization of MDE artefacts
- Reuse techniques for transformations and code generators.
- Reuse techniques for models and metamodels
- Definition of reusable (meta-)model patterns and transformation patterns
- Componentization techniques for MDE artefacts

* Techniques for increasing the agility of the MDE process
- Experience reports regarding lack of flexibility in using modeling and MDE
- Agility and MDE, agile modelling
- Techniques for reducing the gap between modelling and programming


Submission guidelines
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Two kinds of papers are solicited: regular papers (max 10 pages), and
position papers (max 5 pages), adhering to the Springer LNCS style.
Contributions should address novel or preliminary research ideas,
challenging problems, and practical contributions to the domain.
Industrial feedback are welcome: experience or case studies about
applying MDE in an industrial setting showing the lack of flexibility,
or ways to overcome it, are solicited .

All papers must be written in English. Accepted papers will be published
as CEUR workshop proceedings, and indexed in DBLP.

Paper can be submitted via Easy Chair using the following link:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=flexmde15

Authors of best papers will be invited to prepare an extended
version of their work for a special issue about Flexible MDE at the
Elsevier Computer Languages, Systems & Structures journal
(http://ees.elsevier.com/comlan/).


Important dates
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Abstract submission deadline: July 10, 2015
Paper submission: July 17, 2015
Notification to authors: August 21, 2015
Workshop dates: September 29, 2015


Organizers
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Davide Di Ruscio, University of L'Aquila (Italy)
Alfonso Pierantonio, University of L'Aquila (Italy)
Juan De Lara, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain)



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Davide Di Ruscio, PhD in Computer Science
Department of Information Engineering Computer Science and Mathematics
University of L'Aquila
Via Vetoio, Coppito I-67010 L'Aquila (Italy)
Email: [log in to unmask]
WWW:   http://www.di.univaq.it/diruscio
Skype: davidediruscio
Twitter: DDiRuscio
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