Section: Research Program

MDE Foundations

Traditionally, models were often used as initial design sketches mainly aimed for communicating ideas among developers. On the contrary, MDE promotes models as the primary artifacts that drive all software engineering activities (i.e. not only software development but also evolution, reverse engineering, interoperability and so on) and are considered as the unifying concept [41] . Therefore, rigorous techniques for model definition and manipulation are the basis of any MDE framework.

The MDE community distinguishes three levels of models: (terminal) model, metamodel, and metametamodel. A terminal model is a (partial) representation of a system/domain that captures some of its characteristics (different models can provide different knowledge views on the domain and be combined later on to provide a global view). In MDE we are interested in terminal models expressed in precise modeling languages. The abstract syntax of a language, when expressed itself as a model, is called a metamodel. A complete language definition is given by an abstract syntax (a metamodel), one or more concrete syntaxes (the graphical or textual syntaxes that designers use to express models in that language) plus one or more definition of its semantics. The relation between a model expressed in a language and the metamodel of that language is called conformsTo. Metamodels are in turn expressed in a modeling language called metamodeling language. Similar to the model/metamodel relationship, the abstract syntax of a metamodeling language is called a metametamodel and metamodels defined using a given metamodeling language must conform to its metametamodel. Terminal models, metamodels, and metametamodel form a three-level architecture with levels respectively named M1, M2, and M3. A formal definition of these concepts is provided in [49] and [42] . MDE promotes unification by models, like object technology proposed in the eighties unification by objects [39] . These MDE principles may be implemented in several standards. For example, OMG proposes a standard metametamodel called Meta Object Facility (MOF) while the most popular example of metamodel in the context of OMG standards is the UML metamodel.

In our view the main way to automate MDE is by providing model manipulation facilities in the form of model transformation operations that taking one or more models as input generate one or more models as output (where input and output models are not necessarily conforming to the same metamodel). More specifically, a model transformation Mt defines the production of a model $Mb$ from a model $Ma$. When the source and target metamodels (MMs) are identical ($MMa=MMb$), we say that the transformation is endogenous. When this is not the case ($MMa\ne MMb$) we say the transformation is exogenous. An example of an endogenous transformation is a UML refactoring that transforms public class attributes into private attributes while adding accessor methods for each transformed attribute. Many other operations may be considered as transformations as well. For example verifications or measurements on a model can be expressed as transformations [44] . One can see then why large libraries of reusable modeling artifacts (mainly metamodels and transformations) will be needed.

Another important idea is the fact that a model transformation is itself a model [40] . This means that the transformation program $Mt$ can be expressed as a model and as such conforms to a metamodel $MMt$. This allows an homogeneous treatment of all kinds of terminal models, including transformations. $Mt$ can be manipulated using the same existing MDE techniques already developed for other kinds of models. For instance, it is possible to apply a model transformation $M{t}^{\text{'}}$ to manipulate $Mt$ models. In that case, we say that $M{t}^{\text{'}}$ is a higher order transformation (HOT), i.e. a transformation taking other transformations (expressed as transformation models) as input or/and producing other transformations as output.

As MDE developed, it became apparent that this was a branch of language engineering [43] . In particular, MDE offers an improved way to develop DSLs (Domain-Specific Languages). DSLs are programming or modeling languages that are tailored to solve specific kinds of problems in contrast with General Purpose Languages (GPLs) that aim to handle any kind of problem. Java is an example of a programming GPL and UML an example of a modeling GPL. DSLs are already widely used for certain kinds of programming; probably the best-known example is SQL, a language specifically designed for the manipulation of relational data in databases. The main benefit of DSLs is that they allow everybody to write programs/models using the concepts that actually make sense to their domain or to the problem they are trying to solve (for instance Matlab has matrices and lets the user express operations on them, Excel has cells, relations between cells, and formulas and allows the expression of simple computations in a visual declarative style, etc.). As well as making domain code programmers more productive, DSLs also tend to offer greater optimization opportunities. Programs written with these DSLs may be independent of the specific hardware they will eventually run on. Similar benefits are obtained when using modeling DSLs. In MDE, new DSLs can be easily specified by using the metamodel concept to define their abstract syntax. Models specified with those DSLs can then be manipulated by means of model transformations (with ATL for example [48] ).

When following the previously described principles, one may take advantage of the uniformity of the MDE organization. As an example, considering similarly models of the static architecture and models of the dynamic behavior of a system allows at the same time economy of concepts and economy of implementation.

The following sections describe the main MDE research challenges the team is addressing. They go beyond the development of core MDE techniques (topic on which the team, as mentioned above, has largely contributed in the past, and that we believe is quite well-covered already) and focus on new aspects that are critical for the successful application of MDE in industrial contexts.