Current society heavily relies on software and software systems. Due to its increasing complexity, the design and operation of software systems are becoming challenging. In the last decades, a great deal of effort has been put into addressing software systems design, development, and maintenance challenges. Empirical evidence shows that one of the most critical success factors when developing software systems is their Software Architecture (SA). A SA describes software systems in terms of software components, their interactions, and critical quality attributes. Among other benefits, SAs improve the overall communication among different stakeholders, are the carriers of significant design decisions, promote the use of different abstraction levels, and allow for the early assessment of the software under development.
Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is a paradigm that refers to the systematic use of models as first-class entities throughout the software engineering life cycle. MDE shifts the focus of software development from third-generation programming languages to models. Within MDE, models are manipulated automatically using software programs, also known as model transformations.
In recent years, several studies have been discussing the interplay of SA and MDE, focusing on the benefits of combining these two disciplines. For instance, several works have been proposing the use of metamodels and modeling languages and the formal representation of software (reference) architectures. Other works have focused on using models and metamodels to represent the different structures and quality views. Additional research has been investigating the use of model transformations as automation to enable early analysis and simulation of SAs. Eventually, the interplay between SA and MDE could be beneficial from a tooling perspective, as it would enable the re-use of techniques and technologies used for manipulating (meta)models in the context of SAs.
Despite the advancements, several open challenges still compel the effective interplay between SA and MDE.
MDE4SA 2025 aims to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners where novel and innovative solutions to current and future challenges on the interplay between SAs and MDE can be presented and discussed.
Important Dates
We adhere to the following proposed important dates:- Paper Submission Deadline: December 20, 2024
- Notification of Acceptance: January 20, 2025
- Camera-Ready Submission: January 27, 2025
Topics
- Model-driven techniques and methodologies for designing Software Architectures (SAs)
- Architectural descriptions of SA design, considering logical and physical aspects through Model-Driven Engineering (MDE)
- Model-driven approaches for defining and measuring Quality-of-Service (QoS) in SAs
- Analysis of architectural designs and patterns
- MDE techniques for migrating legacy architectures to microservices and serverless architectures
- Industrial practices and tools supporting MDE adoption in SA
- Methodologies used in industrial contexts
- Model repositories for SAs
- Code generation from SA models and transformation approaches
- Change propagation in SA views and consistency management
- Evolution of SAs through modeling
- Empirical studies on SA and MDE
Submission
We solicit full papers (no more than 10 pages, including references) and short papers (no more than 6 pages, including references) of the following types:- Technical papers presenting novel contributions relevant to the workshop topics
- Work in progress papers presenting preliminary results in applying MDE to software architecture
- Visionary papers on open problems and future research challenges
- Experience papers describing the use of MDE in software architecture within an industrial context
Publication
All submissions must be original work and must not have been previously published or being under review elsewhere.
The accepted papers will be published in the ICSA 2025 Companion proceedings and appear in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library.
For each accepted paper, at least one of the authors must register for the workshop, participate fully in the workshop, and present the paper at the workshop.
Track Chairs
- Francesco Basciani, Computer Science Scientific Area, Gran Sasso Science Institute, L'Aquila (Italy)
- Enxhi Ferko, Academy of Innovation, Design and Engineering, Malardalen University, Vasteras (Sweden)
- Malvina Latifaj , Academy of Innovation, Design and Engineering, Malardalen University, Vasteras (Sweden)
Program Committee
- T.B.A