=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2245/multi_intro
|storemode=property
|title=None
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2245/multi_intro.pdf
|volume=Vol-2245
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==None==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2245/multi_intro.pdf
Preface to the 5th international workshop on multi-level
modelling (MULTI 2018)?
Tony Clark1 , Bernd Neumayr2 , and Adrian Rutle3
1
Aston University, UK
tony.clark@aston.ac.uk
2
Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
neumayr@dke.uni-linz.ac.at
3
Western Norway University of Applied Sciences
adrian.rutle@hvl.no
A growing community of researchers are excited about the prospects offered by multi-level
modelling. However, there is still no clear consensus on what this new paradigm actually entails
and how it should be applied. For example, there are different views on whether it is sound to
combine instance facets and type facets into so-called clabjects, whether strict metamodeling is too
restrictive, and what tool architectures provide the best framework for modeling with multiple
classification levels. This lack of a foundational consensus is mirrored by the lack of a common
focus in current multi-level tools.
MULTI 2018 aims to address these challenges and continue to develop the community es-
tablished by the previous workshops. The workshop goals encourage the community to delineate
different approaches to multi-level modeling and define objective ways to evaluate their respec-
tive strengths and weaknesses. A key way to address this goal is to identify standard/canonical
examples specially designed to exercise the abilities of multilevel modelling approaches.
The workshop encouraged submissions on new concepts, implementation approaches and for-
malisms as well as submissions on controversial positions, requirements for evaluation criteria or
case-study scenarios. Contributions in the area of tool building, multilevel modelling applications,
canonical examples and educational material were equally welcome.
The first MULTI workshop (www.miso.es/multi/2014/) was held at MODELS 2014 in Valencia
and spawned a special theme issue of SoSyM. Since then, three MULTI workshops have been
organized in 2015, 2016, and 2017 as satellite events of the MODELS conference. This MULTI
workshop continues the same tradition as a satellite event of MODELS 2018. The MULTI series of
workshops has succeeded in providing a forum for presenting and discussing advances in the field.
The workshop received 13 submissions of high quality, of which 10 were accepted for publi-
cation in the CEUR workshop proceedings. This year, authors of all the 13 submissions got the
opportunity to present their work at the workshop. Three of the submissions were responses to a
specific challenge—the Bicycle challenge—which was designed to promote the exchange between
different schools of multilevel modelling and to contribute to a consolidation of the field. Challenge
participants were asked to develop a multilevel model, or multilevel DSMLs respectively, to repre-
sent a domain that is provided in a natural language description. The solutions were required to
account for certain requirements and were expected to be submitted in a given structure.
The workshop started with a keynote given by Manuel Wimmer from TU Wien, Austria, with
the title Multi-Level Modeling in the Wild with AutomationML. We finalized the workshop with a
plenary session where the position papers where used as the basis for discussions on the present
and future of multi-level modeling.
The contributions to the workshop were organized into the following main sessions:
Position/Discussion:
– A story of levels describes the options for defining levels in multi-level modeling and the impact
of respective choices on modelers.
– Multilevel modeling: What’s in a level? A position paper argues that a theory of multi-level
modeling must have a distinguished notion of level, which should have both a syntactic and a
semantic status.
– Toward a unified conception of multi-level modelling: Advanced requirements identifies differ-
ences with respect to specific features and terminology as obstacles for the further development
of the field, and suggests a selection of possible requirements for advanced multi-level modeling.
?
https://www.wi-inf.uni-duisburg-essen.de/MULTI2018/
Dynamic Aspects of Processes:
– Multilevel modelling of coloured Petri nets describes a proposal to facilitate the development of
domain-specific versions Coloured Petri nets, with separation of concerns, through multi-level
modeling.
– Practical experiences with multi-level modeling using FMMLx: A hierarchy of domain-specific
modeling languages in support of life-cycle assessment reports on practical challenges the au-
thors have faced while designing a hierarchy of Domain-Specific Modeling Languages (DSMLs)
spanning through a reference DSML, an industry-specific DSML and finally, an enterprise-
specific DSML (ESML) supporting a life-cycle analysis of products.
Fundamental Advances:
– A tool for the convergence of multilevel modelling approaches presents a tool that may pro-
vide empirical data and practical instrumentation to aid in the discussion of the foundational
concepts of the multi-level modeling paradigm.
– Context-aware factors in rearchitecting two-level models into multilevel models analyzes context-
aware factors of accidental complexity in multi-level modeling, suggest quantitative measures
for these factors, and show how they can be used for evaluating alternative transformations of
two-level models into multilevel models.
– Multi-level modeling with XML proposes design principles of an XML format for representing
multi-level models as XML documents. The approach is realized as a lightweight extension to
the XML Schema Definition (XSD) standard, using built-in XML language extension mecha-
nisms.
Bicycle Challenge:
– The bicycle challenge in DMLA, where validation means correct modeling describes a solution
to the challenge using the Dynamic Multi-Layer Algebra (DMLA). The solution specifies all
mandatory and several of the optional requirements; moreover, all of them have been automat-
ically validated for correctness as well.
– Multi-level modeling with MELANEE A contribution to the MULTI 2018 Challenge presents
a solution to the challenge using the MELANEE deep modeling tool. The paper presents a
detailed description of the developed deep model, followed by a discussion of the strengths and
weaknesses of the approach and a discussion of its benefits over traditional two-level modeling.
The presented model covers all mandatory and optional aspects of the case study.