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https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2019/mrt_intro.pdf
Summary of the 12th International Workshop on
Models@run.time
Sebastian Götz∗ , Nelly Bencomo† , Kirstie Bellmann‡ , Gordon Blair§ ,
∗ Technische Universität Dresden, Germany, Email: sebastian.goetz@acm.org
† Aston University, UK, Email: nelly@acm.org
‡ Topcy House Consulting, US, Email: bellmanhome@yahoo.com
§ Lancaster University, UK, Email: gordon@comp.lancs.ac.uk
Abstract—This year the 12th edition of the workshop Mod- 60
els@run.time was held at the 20th International Conference
on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems. The 50
workshop took place in the city of Austin, Texas, USA, on the 18th
of September 2017. The workshop was organized by Sebastian 40
Götz, Nelly Bencomo, Kirstie Bellman and Gordon Blair. Here,
30
we present a summary of the workshop and a synopsis of the
topics discussed and highlighted during the workshop. 20
I. I NTRODUCTION 10
Once more, the models@run.time community [2], [3], [5]
0
has met at the MODELS conference and discussed the newest 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
early stage research in our field. Compared with previous Attendees Submiss ions Accepte d
editions of workshops in MODELS, in general, the number of
submissions dropped and it included our workshop. Notably, Fig. 1. The MRT Workshop Series since 2008
this did not have any impact on the number of participants at
the workshop which was quiet high again. Although this year,
only 4 papers were accepted for presentation at the workshop, future by the community. After this introduction, two sessions
we had approximately 20 active participants throughout the with paper presentations followed. The last session was used
day and lots of lively discussions. Table I and Figure 1 show for an intensive discussion of what the community considers
how the workshop quantitatively evolved over the last years. as challenging problems to be solved. In the following, all four
sessions will be summarized in more detail.
Year Attendees Submissions Accepted (Long+Short)
2008 44 20 6+6 A. Models@run.time for Evolution
2009 49 16 4+2
2010 35 15 4+6
The first session covering presentations by the authors fo-
2011 26 10 4+2 cused on the application of models@run.time with the purpose
2012 48 18 11 to support software evolution.
2013 25 20 7+2
2014 27 8 5
Hassan Gomaa gave the first talk, presenting his paper,
2015 36 13 8 which was jointly authored with Emad Albassam, with the
2016 30 12 7 topic “Run-time Software Architectural Models for Adaptation,
2017 20 7 4
TABLE I Recovery and Evolution’’. He presented an overview of archi-
K EY N UMBERS OF THE MRT W ORKSHOP S ERIES tectural runtime models and their use for adaptation recovery
as well as evolution.
The second talk was given by Dhaminda Abeywickrama,
who presented his paper, jointly authored with Eila Ovaska,
II. W ORKSHOP S ESSIONS
with the topic “Reflexive and Evolutional Digital Service
Among the participants, there were many new researchers – Ecosystems with Models at Runtime”. In contrast to the
an observation we regularly have over the last years. Hence, we first paper, his approach applied models@run.time at three
started the workshop with an introduction to models@run.time abstraction levels: at the level of goals, of architecture and
in three parts. First, Nelly Bencomo gave a historical perspec- of the domain/context. The approach was evaluated using a
tive on the last 12 years of models@run.time based on [1]. case study from the ambient assisted living domain.
After, Sebastian Götz showed first results from an upcoming
literature survey on models@run.time covering 271 papers B. Models@run.time for Assurance
from the field. Finally, Kirstie Bellman rounded up the intro- The second session covering paper presentations had assur-
duction by teasing challenging problems to be solved in the ance as its theme.
Byron Devries gave the first presentation on his paper, models were being used. This was noted as being especially
jointly authored with Betty Cheng, having the title “Using important when the system has crashed and has switched to
Models at Run Time to Detect Incomplete and Inconsistent new configurations, and for assessing the progress towards new
Requirements”. He presented an approach to detect incom- goals. In a separate discussion, there was a great deal of
plete requirements at runtime. Thus, this approach applied interest by the workshop participants in the growing literature
models@run.time at the abstraction level of requirements. The review, comparison, and gap analysis being done on 271
approach was evaluated using a case study from adaptive papers on Models@run.time by Götz and Bencomo. This led
cruise control. to a great deal of discussion on how to characterize the diverse
The second talk was given by Christopher Landauer on findings and what to do with the information gained from the
his paper entitled “Active System Integrity Fences”. Fences, as study and especially how to encourage filling in the research
introduced by Christopher Landauer, are a generalized concept gapsby the community.
of contract-based programming, i.e., the application of model- Branching off from this discussion,we also discussed how
based contracts at system runtime. The approach was evaluated to integrate multiple runtime models.
argumentatively in the context of safety-critical systems. We ended the workshop with a discussion of some of the
overarching challenges and problems for MRT.
C. Beyond Models@run.time This included technical challenges and social challenges for
Several issues were discussed during the last 60 minutes of identifying and bringing in the expertise we need into the com-
the workshop. munity. Among the technical challenges, one keychallenge was
One issue discussed was the need for a definition of to better define and support the relationship between design
models@run.time-based architectural patterns, which was time and MRT systems for long-term improvement, analysis,
coined by Peter Clarke. The idea is to take advantage of the and system understanding. Another was the importance of
experience of the construction of different architectures during discovery processes for the ability to find the relevant MRT
more than a decade and to categorise the different experiences models for a given goal, especially in distributed systems.
by using patterns. By this, we could start discussing mod- The third major challenge was how to share results (including
els@run.time with the software architecture community. how to gauge their relevancy) among different MRT models
There was also discussion about using the notion of transac- in distributed, complex systems.
tions to support the causal connection needed to fully support Among the social issues, we discussed how to encourage the
runtime models. The need to do further research on the use community to develop more theoretical foundations for such
of machine learning techniques for emerging runtime models difficult MRT issues as integration, self-modeling, and model
was also part of the lively discussion. Finally, Kirstie Bellman generation. We also discussed what kinds of new expertise we
introduced the idea of using runtime models for V&V at need in the community to better address MRT challenges.
runtime. Since the first edition of the workshop, it was constantly
In the end, the audience agreed that it is a good idea to run co-located to the MODELS conference and, consequently,
the workshop again in 2018. mainly attracted participants from the modelling community.
However, this year for the second time we also ran a separate
III. C ONCLUSION edition of models@run.time at ICAC [4] to attract people
The twelfth edition of the international workshop on mod- from self-aware and autonomous computing. We plan to
els@run.time was again very well visited (20 participants). continue both editions next year, i.e., a third workshop on
The trend of submissions was low in comparison to the last models@run.time for self-aware computing systems at ICAC
years. Notably, although only few papers were submitted (5), and a 13th workshop on models@run.time at MODELS.
as a set they presented high quality, which allowed us to accept
four (4) papers. R EFERENCES
One of the defining characteristics of the MRT workshop [1] Nelly Bencomo. The role of models@run.time in autonomic systems:
Keynote. In 2017 IEEE International Conference on Autonomic Comput-
is a commitment to discussion time and this year’s workshop ing, ICAC 2017, Columbus, OH, USA, July 17-21, 2017, pages 293–294,
continued that tradition in a lively and informative fashion. 2017.
In order to develop high quality models for use at runtime, [2] Nelly Bencomo, Robert France, Betty H. C. Cheng, and Uwe Aßmann,
editors. Models@run.time. Foundations, Applications, and Roadmaps,
we need to deal with the classical AI knowledge engineering volume 8378. Springer LNCS, 2014.
problem of how to get the knowledge that is in an experts [3] G. Blair, N. Bencomo, and R.B. France. Models@run.time. Computer,
head OR in the systems sensors and status databases into the 42(10):22–27, Oct 2009.
[4] Sebastian Götz, Nelly Bencomo, Kirstie Bellman, and Gordon Blair. 1st
models. One of the challenges going forward is to capture the international workshop on models@run.time for self-aware computing
knowledge that is meaningful to the tasks and the decisions of systems. In IEEE International Conference on Autonomic Computing
the system; this requires a great deal of flexibility and meta- (ICAC), pages 363–363, July 2016.
[5] Sebastian Götz, Nelly Bencomo, and Robert France. Devising the future
knowledge in the reasoning processes. of the models@run.time workshop. SIGSOFT Software Engineering
Another topic that was widely discussed was the need Notes, 40(1):26–29, January 2015.
for self-explanation so that the human users and developers
could better monitor when and how the different runtime