ModComp 2017: 4th International Workshop on Interplay of Model-Driven and Component-Based Software Engineering Federico Ciccozzi∗ , Ivano Malavolta† ∗ Mälardalen University – IDT, Västerås (Sweden) federico.ciccozzi@mdh.se † Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam (The Netherlands) i.malavolta@vu.nl Abstract—Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) and Component- systems needs to bring component-based principles at the level Based Software Engineering (CBSE) have been proven to ef- of the software model landscape hence supporting, e.g., the fectively reduce software development complexity by (i) shifting specification of model interdependencies, and their retrieval, the focus from source code to models and (ii) breaking down the set of desired features and their intricacy into smaller sub- as well as enabling interoperability between the different modules, respectively. Moreover, the interplay of MDE and CBSE notations used for specifying the software. On the other hand, approaches is gaining recognition as a very promising means to MDE techniques must become part of the CBSE process to boost the development of software systems by reducing costs enable the effective reuse of third-party software entities and and risks and shorten time-to-market. While several attempts their integration as well as, generally, to boost automation in to effectively combine MDE and CBSE have been documented, there are still unsolved clashes raising when exploiting interplay the development process. of MDE and CBSE, mostly due to mismatches in the related terminology as well as to differences in their basic essence. The goal of ModComp is to gather researchers and practition- An effective interplay of CBSE and MDE approaches could ers to share opinions, propose solutions to open challenges and help in handling the intricacy of modern software systems generally explore the frontiers of interweaving between MDE and and thus reducing costs and risks by: (i) enabling efficient CBSE. modelling and analysis of extra-functional properties, (ii) Index Terms—Model-driven engineering, component-based improving reusability through the definition and implemen- software engineering, MDE, CBSE, interplay, workshop, MOD- ELS. tation of components loosely coupled into assemblies, (iii) providing automation where applicable (and favourable) in the I. A BOUT M OD C OMP development process. In the last fifteen years, such a cooper- ation has been recognized as extremely promising; tools and The design of modern software systems requires support frameworks have been developed for supporting this kind of capable of properly dealing with their ever-increasing com- integrated development process. In the last few, the application plexity. In order to account for such a complexity, the whole of MDE and CBSE to tackle great challenges related to high software engineering process needs to be rethought and, in heterogeneity and variability of complex systems, like the particular, the traditional division among development phases Internet-of-Things, has been recognised too [3]. Nevertheless, to be revisited, hence moving some activities from design when exploiting interplay of MDE and CBSE, clashes arise time to deployment and runtime. Model-Driven Engineer- due to misalignments in the related terminology but also, and ing (MDE) [1] and Component-Based Software Engineering more importantly, due to differences in some of their basic (CBSE) [2] can be considered as two orthogonal ways of assumptions and focal points. reducing development complexity: the former shifts the focus of application development from source code to models in order to bring system reasoning closer to domain-specific The goal of the workshop on Interplay of Model-Driven and concepts; the latter aims to organize software into encapsulated Component-Based Software Engineering 2017 (ModComp’17) independent components with well-defined interfaces, from was to gather researchers and practitioners to share opinions, which complex applications can be built and incrementally propose solutions to open challenges, and generally explore enhanced. the frontiers of collaboration between MDE and CBSE. When exploiting these development approaches, numerous ModComp’17 aimed at attracting contributions related to the different modelling notations and consequently several soft- subject at different levels, from modelling to analysis, from ware models are involved during the software life cycle. On componentization to composition, from consistency to version- the one hand, effectively dealing with all the involved models ing; foundational contributions as well as concrete application and heterogeneous modelling notations that describe software experiments were sought. II. S UMMARY discussions is the need and importance of a more focused The workshop was co-located with the ACM/IEEE 20th research effort in the interplay of MDE and CBSE. For International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Lan- this reason, we are already planning for the next edition of guages & Systems (MODELS), and represented an active ModComp, which we hope to be able to propose once again forum for practitioners and researchers. We received eight full at MODELS. submissions, out of which the following six were selected for ACKNOWLEDGMENT inclusion in the workshop’s program and proceedings: The organization of the ModComp workshop is par- – Model-based Design of Reusable Secure Connectors. tially supported by the Knowledge Foundation through Authors: Michael Shin, Hassan Gomaa and Don Pathirage the MOMENTUM project (http://www.es.mdh.se/projects/ – A Classification of Dynamic Reconfiguration in Compo- 458-MOMENTUM). We would like to thank the authors and nent and Connector Architecture Description Languages. the program committee for their hard and precious work Authors: Arvid Butting, Robert Heim, Oliver Kautz, Jan before, during, and after the workshop. Oliver Ringert, Bernhard Rumpe and Andreas Wortmann – Model-driven Development of Adaptive IoT Systems. R EFERENCES Authors: Mahmoud Hussein, Shuai Li and Ansgar Ra- [1] D. C. Schmidt, “Model-driven engineering,” COMPUTER-IEEE COM- dermacher PUTER SOCIETY-, vol. 39, no. 2, p. 25, 2006. [2] I. Crnkovic, “Component-based software engineering: new challenges in – OCL Framework to Verify Extra-Functional Properties software development,” Software Focus, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 127–133, 2001. in Component and Connector Models. Authors: Shahar [3] F. Ciccozzi, I. Crnkovic, D. Di Ruscio, I. Malavolta, P. Pelliccione, Maoz, Ferdinand Mehlan, Jan Oliver Ringert, Bernhard and R. Spalazzese, “Model-driven engineering for mission-critical iot systems,” IEEE Software, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 46–53, 2017. Rumpe and Michael von Wenckstern [4] F. Ciccozzi, J. Carlson, P. Pelliccione, and M. Tivoli, “Editorial to – Model-driven generation of a BPMS portal based on theme issue on model-driven engineering of component-based software Interaction Flow Modeling Language models. Authors: systems,” Software & Systems Modeling, pp. 1–4. Daniel Calegari and Andrea Delgado – A Multipurpose Framework for Model-based Reuse- oriented Software Integration Synthesis. Authors: Alexan- der Perucci, Marco Autili and Massimo Tivoli In addition to paper presentations, we hosted two invited talks to get insights from both academic and industrial per- spectives: – CBSD through MDE vs MDE through CBSD: two dif- ferent stories, an academic perspective on the interplay of MDE and CBSE given by Antonio Cicchetti, Associate Professor at Mälardalen University (Sweden) – Various avataar of component concept and MDE – a prac- titioner’s perspective, given by Vinay Vasant Kulkarni, Chief Scientist and Head of Software Systems Research at Tata Consultancy Services (India) The accepted papers and invited talks covered many dif- ferent forms of intertwining of MDE and CBSE, including: design of secure reusable connectors, dynamic reconfiguration of components with MDE, MDE of adaptive component- based IoT systems, verification of extra-functional properties of components through MDE, different flavours of the concept of component in industrial MDE, MDE through CBSE and vice versa from a research perspective. This was the fourth edition of the workshop and the very good received attention (between 20 and 30 participants) demonstrates that the topics discussed in the workshop are relevant both in practice and in theory. III. O UTLOOK We are planning to organise another theme issue on Mod- Comp topics at an international journal in the software en- gineering field, as we did for ModComp 2015 [4]. One of the clear messages that arose during paper presentations and