ECMFA 2016

12th European Conference on Modelling Foundations and Applications

July 4-8, 2016, Electrotechnical Institute of TU Wien, Vienna


News

  • Proceedings are now available online: link
  • The schedule is now online.

General Description

Model-Based Engineering (MBE) is an approach to the design, analysis and development of software and systems that relies on exploiting high-level models and computer-based automation to achieve significant boosts in both productivity and quality. The ECMFA conference series is dedicated to advancing the state of knowledge and fostering the industrial application of MBE and related approaches. Its focus is on engaging the key figures of research and industry in a dialog which will result in stronger and more effective practical application of MBE, hence producing more reliable software based on state-of-the-art research results. ECMFA 2016 will be co-located with ICMT, TAP, SEFM, ICGT and TTC as part of the STAF federation of conferences, leading conferences on software technologies (STAF2016). The joint organization of these prominent conferences provides a unique opportunity to gather practitioners and researchers interested in all aspects of software technology, and allow them to interact with each other.

Call for papers

ECMFA has two distinct Paper Tracks: one for research papers (Track F) dealing with the foundations for MBE, and one for industrial/applications papers (Track A) dealing with the applications of MBE, including experience reports on MBE tools.

Research Papers (Track F)
In this track, we are soliciting papers presenting original research on all aspects of MBE. Typical topics of interest include, among others:

  • Foundations of (Meta)modelling
  • Domain Specific Modelling Languages and Language Workbenches
  • Model Reasoning, Testing and Validation
  • Model Transformation, Code Generation and Reverse Engineering
  • Model Execution and Simulation
  • Model Management aspects such as (Co-)Evolution, Consistency, Synchronization
  • Model-Based Engineering Environments and Tool Chains
  • Foundations of Requirements Modelling, Architecture Modelling, Platform Modelling
  • Foundations of Quality Aspects and Modelling non-functional System Properties
  • Scalability of MBE techniques
  • Collaborative Modeling

Industrial Papers (Track A)
In this track, we are soliciting papers representing views, innovations and experiences of industrial players in applying or supporting MBE. In particular, we are looking for papers that set requirements on the foundations, methods, and tools for MBE. We are also seeking experience reports or case studies on the application, successes or current shortcomings of MBE. Quantitative results reflecting industrial experience are particularly appreciated. All application areas of MBE are welcomed including but not limited to any of the following:

  • MBE for Large and Complex Industrial Systems
  • MBE for Safety-Critical Systems
  • MBE for Cyber-Physical Systems
  • MBE for Software and Business Process Modelling
  • MBE Applications in Transportation, Health Care, Cloud & Mobile computing, etc.
  • Model-Based Integration and Simulation
  • Model-Based System Analysis
  • Application of Modeling Standards
  • Comparative Studies of MBE Methods and Tools
  • Metrics for MBE Development
  • MBE Training

Submission and selection
Manuscripts for both tracks must be submitted as PDF files through the EasyChair online submission system. Please ensure that you submit to the right track! Research papers should be up to 16 pages long; Industrial papers should be 12 pages long (full papers), or 2 pages long (short papers). Short papers will be given shorter presentation slots.

Papers must be compliant with the LNCS paper style. Failure to conform to these guidelines may result in disqualification of the paper. In particular, papers longer than the maximum number of pages may be automatically rejected without review.

All contributions will be subject to a rigorous selection process by the Program Committee. No simultaneous submission to other publication outlets (either a conference or a journal) is allowed; any concurrent submission will result in the immediate rejection of the paper. As in previous years, the proceedings of the conference with the accepted papers of both Tracks will be published in a dedicated Springer LNCS volume. If accepted, one of the authors must attend the ECMFA 2016 conference and present the work in person.

A Special Journal Issue The authors of selected best papers from the foundations track will be invited to submit extended version to a special issue of the SoSyM journal (with another review process).

Important Dates

Abstract submission deadline: February 15, 2016 AoE

Paper submission deadline: March 1, 2016 AoE

Notification to authors: April 7, 2016

Camera ready version due: April 28, 2016

Keynotes

  • A Model-Based Driver's License for Self-Driving Cars: Challenges and Future Directions

    Prof. Krzysztof Czarnecki

    Vehicles with limited self-driving capabilities are already on the market and some car makers have promised products capable of autonomous driving in an urban setting in 2020. Self-driving cars will eventually completely transform the automotive industry, replacing private car ownership by service-based products such as robotic cabs. The deployment of large-scale self-driving vehicle fleets will reduce the number of crashes and crash severity, reduce emissions, allow commuters to use their time more effectively, and free up spaces occupied by parked cars. The engineering of self-driving cars requires sophisticated models of the environment and the electronic driver system in order to develop the necessary perception and motion planning and control functions. While current self-driving technologies have improved immensely in recent years, a major challenge is assuring the safe operation of an autonomous vehicle in all traffic situations and all road conditions. I will present a reference architecture for self-driving cars and use it to describe the types of models used in engineering of such systems. I will then focus on the challenges of assuring model-based engineering of self-driving cars. I will close by outlining promising directions to address these challenges.

    Krzysztof Czarnecki is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Before coming to Waterloo, he was a researcher at DaimlerChrysler Research (1995-2002), Germany, focusing on improving software development practices and technologies in enterprise, automotive, and aerospace domains. He co-authored the book on 'Generative Programming' (Addison- Wesley, 2000), which deals with automating software component assembly based on domain-specific languages. While at Waterloo, he held the NSERC/Bank of Nova Scotia Industrial Research Chair in Requirements Engineering of Service-oriented Software Systems (2008-2013) and has worked on a range of topics in model-driven systems and software engineering, including product line engineering, design exploration and synthesis, variability modeling, model transformation, and domain-specific languages. He has also helped automotive and aerospace companies introduce effective product-line engineering practices. He received the Premier's Research Excellence Award in 2004 and the British Computing Society in Upper Canada Award for Outstanding Contributions to IT Industry in 2008. He currently leads the NSERC CREATE in Product Line Engineering for Cyber-physical Systems, a $2.7 million industry-oriented graduate research and training program at the University of Waterloo, and WatAuto, Canada's first self-driving vehicle research project.

  • Usage of domain specific modeling languages in the automotive industry

    Dr. Stefan Voget, Continental Automotive GmbH.

    Before the introduction of model based engineering, the answer for the language question within the automotive industry was simple: use C. The idea of model based engineering is to shift the complexity out of a textual representation of the code (the source code in C) to a model. Here, the question about language comes up again. This time, it revolves around the decision which language to use to represent the model. Today, the answer is not that simple anymore. Within the automotive industry nearly each project uses it's own representation. Often the representation is determined by the architectural tool used in the project. To become independent from these "tool languages", more and more domain specific modeling languages come up, most of which end up as project specific modeling languages, i.e. specific languages used only in a very dedicated context. In the keynote I will present a motivation for the definition and usage of domain specific modeling languages by using two examples. The first example integrates the development lifecycle of a SW developer with the one of a responsible for functional safety. The second example describes a unified approach for the configuration of different software platforms. Both examples and their motivations are quite different from each other, but show the needs for comprehensive common languages and the importance of model to model transformations to interact between them.

    Mr. Stefan Voget is head of HW/SW Innovations in the central strategy and technology department of Continental Automotive in Regensburg, Germany. Mr. Voget got his doctoral thesis in informatics and mathematics in 1996. From 1997 to 2005 he worked on SW-architecture projects for Robert Bosch GmbH. He changed 2005 to Siemens VDO Automotive in Regensburg. He represented the company as project leader in the AUTOSAR consortium worked for several years as product manager for AUTOSAR products. In 2011 he changed to the innovation department in Continental Automotive and led an international funded project "SAFE" about process interpretation of ISO26262. Since 2014 he works for innovation topics for the automated driving area.

Schedule

Wednesday 6/7

Time Session/Paper
Wed 6/7 11:00-13:00 Session 1: Multi- and many models - Session Chair: Steffen Zschaler
11h00 Önder Babur, Loek Cleophas and Mark van den Brand: Hierarchical Clustering of Metamodels for Comparative Analysis and Visualization
11h30 Harald Koenig and Zinovy Diskin: Local Checking of Global Consistency in Heterogeneous Multimodeling
12h00 Jad El-Khoury, Cecilia Ekelin and Christian Ekholm: Supporting the Linked Data Approach to Maintain Coherence across Rich EMF Models
12h30 Antonio Garcia-Dominguez, Dimitris Kolovos, Konstantinos Barmpis, Ran Wei and Richard Paige: Stress-Testing Centralised Model Stores
Wed 6/7 16:00-17:30 Session 2: Language Engineering - Session Chair: Dimitris Kolovos
16h00 Robert Heim, Pedram Mir Seyed Nazari, Bernhard Rumpe and Andreas Wortmann: Compositional Language Engineering using Generated, Extensible, Static Type-Safe Visitors
16h30 Colin Atkinson and Thomas Kuehne: Demystifying Ontological Classification in Language Engineering
17h00 Jesús J. López Fernández, Antonio Garmendia, Esther Guerra and Juan De Lara: Example-based generation of graphical modelling environments

Thursday 7/7

Time Session/Paper
Thu 7/7 09:00-10:30 Keynote. Krzysztof Czarnecki: A Model-Based Driver's License for Self-Driving Cars: Challenges and Future Directions - Session Chair: Andrzej Wasowski
Thu 7/7 11:00-13:00 Session 3: UML and meta-modeling - Session Chair: Gabriele Taentzner
11h00 Céline Bensoussan, Jörg Kienzle and Matthias Schöttle: Associations in MDE: A Concern-Oriented, Reusable Solution
11h30 Wael Kessentini, Houari Sahraoui and Manuel Wimmer: Automated Metamodel/Model Co-Evolution using a Multi-Objective Optimization Approach
12h00 Massimo Tisi, Frédéric Jouault, Zied Saidi and Jérôme Delatour: Enabling OCL and fUML Integration by Transformation
12h30 Matthieu Allon, Gilles Vanwormhoudt, Bernard Carré and Olivier Caron: Isolating and Reusing Template Instances in UML
Thu 7/7 14:00-15:30 Session 4: Experience reports and case studies - Session Chair: Ramin Tavakoli Kolagari
14h00 Shuai Wang, Hong Lu, Tao Yue, Shaukat Ali and Jan F Nygå rd: MBF4CR: A Model-Based Framework for Supporting An Automated Cancer Registry System
14h30 Markus Scheidgen, Sven Efftinge and Frederik Marticke: Metamodeling vs Metaprogramming: A Case Study on Developing Client Libraries for REST APIs
15h00 Georg Hinkel, Oliver Denninger, Sebastian Krach and Henning Groenda: Experiences with Model-driven Engineering in Neurorobotics
Thu 7/7 16:00-17:00 Industrial Keynote. Stefan Voget: Usage of domain specific modeling languages in the automotive industry -- Session Chair: Henrik Lönn
Thu 7/7 17:00-18:00 Session 5: Variability and uncertainty - Session Chair: Stefan Voget
17h00 Davide Di Ruscio, Juergen Etzlstorfer, Ludovico Iovino, Alfonso Pierantonio and Wieland Schwinger: Supporting variability exploration and resolution during model migration
17h30 Man Zhang, Bran Selic, Shaukat Ali, Tao Yue, Oscar Okariz and Roland Norgren: Understanding Uncertainty in Cyber-Physical Systems: A Conceptual Model

PC Chairs

Research Papers (Track F): Andrzej Wąsowski, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Industrial Papers (Track A): Henrik Lönn, Volvo Group, Sweden

Program Committee

Foundations Track

Applications Track

Steering Committee

  • Sébastien Gérard, CEA List, France (Chair)
  • Julia Rubin, MIT, USA
  • Reda Bendraou, Université Pierre & Marie Curie, France
  • Jochen Kuester, IBM Zurich, Switzerland
  • Juha-Pekka Tolvanen, MetaCase, Finland
  • Ekkart Kindler ,Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
  • Tom Ritter, Fraunhofer, FOKUS, Germany
  • Pieter Van Gorp, Eindhoven University of Technology, NL