Foreword by the Chair

Marjan Mernik, University of Maribor, Slovenia

Model-driven engineering (MDE) refers to a range of approaches where models play a core role in software development. Modeling promotes reasoning at higher level of abstraction, therefore reducing complexity of software development, while hiding the unnecessary low level details at appropriate stages, and promoting communication among the several stakeholders in the development process. MDE initiatives make claims of increased quality and productivity by separating business and application logic from underlying platform technology, transforming models to other models and automating code generation. However, while quality assurance is a well-known topic in “traditional” Software Engineering, less is known on how to assess quality across the MDE lifecycle. We should understand not only how to measure the quality of the MDE process (and determine if it is better than other approaches), but also to understand the quality of the models themselves (determining metrics for both models and metamodels’ quality, design patterns, and anti-patterns). All aspects of research related to Quality of Model-Driven Engineering have been considered including both theoretical and empirical work. To widely distributed call for papers sixteen papers were originally submitted to QMDE at QUATIC 2014. Finally, six papers were selected for an acceptance rate of 37.5%.

1. Christine M. Gerpheide, Ramon R.H. Schiffelers, Alexander Serebrenik. A Bottom-Up Quality Model for QVTo. This paper presents a quality model for QVTo - a language for implementing model transformations. With the qualitative data from exploratory study by performing expert interviews, existing material review and introspection a quality model is built consisting of 37 quality attributes and 4 quality goals (functionality, understandability, performance, and maintainability). The quality model has been validated by conducting a survey in which QVTo developers rate each attribute on its importance to QVTo code quality.

2. Bernhard Hoisl, Stefan Sobernig, Mark Strembeck. Comparing Three Notations for Defining Scenario-based Model Tests: A Controlled Experiment. This paper presents a controlled experiment to evaluate three notations, a semi-structured natural-language notation, a diagrammatic notation, and a fully-structured textual notation, for their applicability to describe scenario-based model tests. It is shown that the choice of a specific notation has an effect on the productivity when testing models for requirements conformance. The results indicate that a natural-language-based approach for scenario-based model tests is the most suitable, as it required the least task-solving time, is the most accurate, and most favored by the participants included into the experiment.

3. Igor Rožanc and Boštjan Slivnik. On the appropriateness of domain-specific languages derived from different metamodels. This paper proposes two metrics to measure appropriateness of meta-model based Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) and as such estimate the influence of a metamodel on the quality of DSLs derived from it. Both metrics are based on abstract syntax trees of programs written in the derived DSLs. The approach is demonstrated using examples from two different domains.

4. Clara Sacramento, Ana C. R. Paiva. Web Application Model Generation through Reverse Engineering and UI Pattern Inferring. This paper presents a dynamic reverse engineering approach that aims to extract part of the model of an existing Web application through the identification of User Interface (UI) patterns. The extracted model is used as the input for the Pattern-Based GUI Testing (PBGT) approach for testing existing applications. The evaluation of the presented approach has been conducted on several Web applications.

5. Jacome Cunha, João Paulo Fernandes, Pedro Martins, Rui Pereira, João Saraiva. Refactoring meets Model-Driven Spreadsheet Evolution. This paper presents a set of refactorings for ClassSheets, a modeling language that allows specifying the business logic in an object-oriented manner. Refactored models are easier to understand and to reason about. Hence, overall quality of models is improved. The refactorings have been implemented in a tool, ensuring the automated application of model refactorings.

6. Verónica A. Bollati, Juan M. Vara, Álvaro Jiménez, Esperanza Marcos. On the Impact of Automation and Trace-enabling over the Quality of Model Transformations. The paper presents the results of an experiment on evaluating the impact of automation and trace enabling on the quality of model transformations measured by understandability, modifiability, reusability, modularity, completeness, consistency and conciseness. The focus of the evaluation is on MeTAGeMTrace, a framework which includes trace generation and automation of model transformations.

Dr. Marjan Mernik received his M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the University of Maribor in 1994 and 1998 respectively. He is currently a professor at the University of Maribor, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He is also a visiting professor at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, Department of Computer and Information Sciences, and at the University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Technical Sciences. His research interests include programming languages, compilers, domain-specific (modeling) languages, grammar-based systems, grammatical inference, and evolutionary computations. He is a member of the IEEE, ACM and EAPLS. Dr. Mernik is the Editor-In-Chief of Computer Languages, Systems and Structures journal.

Track Committee

Chair: Marjan Mernik, University of Maribor, Slovenia

Local Co-Organizing Chair: Vasco Amaral, FCT-UNL, Portugal

Program Committee: 

• Mauricio Alferez, INRIA, Rennes, France
• Bruno Barroca, McGill University, Canada
• Mark van den Brand, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
• Antonio Cicchetti, Mälardalen University, Sweden
• Jeff Gray, University of Alabama, USA
• Geylani Kardas, Ege University, Turkey
• Shih-Hsi Liu, California State University Fresno, USA
• Ivan Lukovic, University of Novi Sad, Serbia
• Ana Moreira, FCT/UNL, Portugal
• Richard Paige, University of York, UK
• Maria Joao Varanda Pereira, Instituto Politecnico de Braganca, Portugal
• Bernhard Rumpe, Aachen University, Germany
• Eugene Syriani, University of Alabama, USA
• Juha-Pekka Tolvanen, Metacase, Finland
• Federico Tomassetti, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
• Antonio Vallecillo, University of Valencia, Spain
• Hans Vangheluwe, University of Antwerp, Belgium and McGill University, Canada

News!

The thematic track is associated with a Special Issue on Quality in Model-Driven Engineering (QMDE)  at Software Quality Journal (SQJ) by Springer, and provides an opportunity to have an open discussion and receive feedback in preparation for submission to that special issue. Researchers considering submission to SQJ special issue are strongly encouraged to submit their papers to the QUATIC'14 Thematic Track on Quality in Model Driven Engineering.

Call for Papers

Model-driven engineering (MDE) refers to a range of approaches where models play an indispensable role in software development. Modeling promotes higher level of abstraction, therefore reducing complexity of software development and promoting communication among the several stakeholders in the development process (e.g. product managers, designers, programmers). MDE initiatives, like OMG’s Model-Driven Architecture (MDA), make claims of increased quality and productivity by separating business and application logic from underlying platform technology, transforming models to other models and automating code generation (ranging from system skeletons to complete, deployable products). However, while quality assurance is a well-known topic in “traditional” Software Engineering, less is known on how to assess quality across the MDE lifecycle (encompassing new activities such as metamodel engineering or transformations specification), as well as on the effective improvements obtained by applying MDE itself, face to not using it at all.