ECMFA 2022

18th European Conference on Modelling Foundations and Applications
Co-located with STAF 2022, 6-7 July 2022, Nantes, France

About ECMFA 2022

About ECMFA 2022

Model-Based Engineering (MBE) is an approach to the design, analysis, and development of software and systems that relies on exploiting high-level models and computer-based automation to achieve significant boosts in both productivity and quality.

The European Conference on Modelling Foundations and Applications (ECMFA) is the premier European forum dedicated to advancing the state of knowledge and fostering the application of all aspects of MBE and related approaches.

In its 16th edition, ECMFA introduced two major successful innovations that will be maintained in the current 18th ECMFA edition to strengthen the scope of the community and to foster the quality of its contributions.

First, the International Conference on Model Transformations (ICMT) joined forces with ECMFA, merging both into one single event that unites all aspects related to Model-Based Engineering (MBE).

Second, a two-phase submission and review process was introduced, with two possible submission periods (October and February). Papers accepted in the first round are published as soon as they are ready, and presented at the conference. Authors of papers not accepted in the first phase are invited to re-submit improved versions of their work in the second submission phase that also welcomes fresh submissions.

Furthermore, since the 15th edition of ECMFA, all accepted papers will be published in the JOT journal, which is platinum open-access and indexed by Scopus, DBLP, and Scientific Commons, among others.

Submissions

We are soliciting papers presenting original research on all aspects of model-based engineering. Two types of submissions are possible:

  • Foundation Papers, dealing with modeling foundations, such as metamodeling, model transformations, model validation, verification and testing, model engineering methods and tools, and related aspects.
  • Application Papers, dealing with the application of modeling techniques, including experience reports on the use of MBE methods and tools, industrial case studies, or successful applications of MBE practices in industry or in public administration, with significant modeling lessons learned. All applications must have been done in real contexts and at least one of the authors of the paper must be from the company or administration where the application took place.

Submissions must conform to the JOT LaTeX template and must not exceed 14 pages (including figures, references, and appendices). Failure to conform to these guidelines may result in disqualification of the paper. No simultaneous submission to other publication outlets (either a conference or a journal) is allowed; any concurrent submission will be deemed as a serious breach of scientific ethics, resulting in the immediate rejection of the paper and appropriate action will be taken.

All submissions will be peer-reviewed by at least three members of the Program Committee.

All papers have to be submitted electronically in PDF format through Easychair at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ecmfa2022.

Review criteria and process

All papers will be assessed by the program committee in terms of their novelty, significance, technical quality, rigor, and suitability for the conference.

Contributions can be submitted to any of the two submission periods. Papers submitted to the first round of review can be recommended by the Program Committee to be accepted-as-is, accepted with minor revisions, undergo major revisions (and resubmit in the second round) or rejected. Recommendations for papers submitted in the second round are for accept, minor revisions, or reject.

Papers accepted at any of the two rounds with minor revisions will be given a specified period of time to perform the revisions and re-submit. The same reviewers will assess how well the revision requests have been addressed by the authors, and whether the final paper maintains or improves the level of contribution of the original submission. Revisions that significantly lessen the contribution of the work or that fail to adequately address the reviewers' original concerns will result in the paper's rejection. Papers not accepted in the first round can be resubmitted to the second one, indicating how the authors have improved the paper to address the reviewers' criticisms. Papers not accepted in the second round but with a sufficient level of quality may be encouraged to be re-submitted next year, or alternatively as regular JOT articles, hence continuing their review process through the normal journal channels.

Papers will be published in the JOT journal as soon as they are accepted and one of their authors registers at the conference.

Artifacts

Artifacts are recommended, but not required, for the initial submission. Depending on the papers, reviewers may take the existence of artifacts as a positive signal about the work. Also depending on the papers, artifacts may be required as a condition for publication.

Publication

All accepted papers will be published as platinum open-access journal publication in JOT. At least one author for each accepted paper must register before the early registration deadline and present the paper during the conference. Failure to do so will result in the paper being withdrawn from the proceedings.

Topics of interest

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Foundations of MBE.
  • Application of MBE methods, tools, and techniques to specific domains, e.g., automotive, aerospace, cyber-physical systems, robotics, Artificial Intelligence or IoT.
  • Successful use of MBE in connection with other disciplines and approaches, such as Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, DevOps, or Open Source, Safety Assurance.
  • Educational aspects of MBE.
  • Tools and initiatives for the successful adoption of MBE in industry.

Important dates

Round 1

  • Submission: Oct 10, 2021
  • Notification: Dec 10, 2021

Round 2

  • Submission: Feb 20, 2022
    Due to several requests, the submission deadline has been extended by one week. Thus, we accept submissions until Feb 27, 2022. However, to get the one week of extension, it is mandatory to submit the title and abstract of your submission by the original deadline, i.e., Feb 20, 2022.
  • Notification: Apr 22, 2022

Conference

6-7 July 2022 as part of STAF 2022

Committees

Program chairs

  • Sahar Kokaly, General Motors/McMaster University (Canada)
  • Davide Di Ruscio, University of L’Aquila (Italy)

Steering committee

  • Martin Gogolla, University of Bremen, Germany
  • Thomas Gschwind, IBM Zurich Research Lab, Switzerland
  • Reiko Heckel, University of Leicester, UK
  • Richard Paige (Chair), University of York, UK
  • Antonio Vallecillo, University of Malaga, Spain
  • Pieter Van Gorp, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
  • Jan Vitek, Northeastern University, USA

Program committee

  • Adrian Rutle, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway
  • Alessandra Bagnato, Softeam, France
  • Alfonso Pierantonio, University of L’Aquila, Italy
  • Andy Schürr, TU Darmstadt, Germany
  • Antonio Cicchetti, Mälardalen University, Sweden
  • Antonio Vallecillo, University of Malaga, Spain
  • Arend Rensink, University of Twente, The Netherlands
  • Athanasios Zolotas, University of York, UK
  • Benoit Combemale, University of Rennes 1, France
  • Bernhard Rumpe, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
  • Bran Selic, Malina Software Corp., Canada
  • Carlos Gustavo Lopez Pombo, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
  • Daniel Varro, McGill University (Canada)/ Budapest University of Technology and Economics (Hungary)
  • Dimitris Kolovos, University of York, UK
  • Esther Guerra, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain
  • Federico Ciccozzi, Mälardalen University, Sweden
  • Gabriele Taentzer, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany
  • Gregor Engels, University of Paderborn, Germany
  • Haiyan Zhao, Peking University, China
  • Javier Troya, University of Malaga, Spain
  • Jeff Gray, University of Alabama, USA
  • Jesús Sánchez Cuadrado, Universidad de Murcia, Spain
  • Joel Greenyer, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany
  • Jörg Kienzle, McGill University, Canada
  • Juha-Pekka Tolvanen, MetaCase, Finland
  • Loli Burgueño, Open University of Catalonia,Spain
  • Ludovico Iovino, Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy
  • Manuel Wimmer, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
  • Mark van den Brand, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
  • Matthias Tichy, Ulm University, Germany
  • Mehrnoosh Askarpour, General Motors, Canada
  • Richard Paige, McMaster University, Canada
  • Sebastien Gerard, CEA LIST, France
  • Shaukat Ali, Simula Research Laboratory, Norway
  • Steffen Zschaler, King's College London, UK
  • Thomas Kuehne, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
  • Vadim Zaytsev, Universiteit Twente, The Netherlands
  • Zinovy Diskin, McMaster University, Canada

Program

Wednesday 6 July 2022

9:00

ECMFA Opening and Keynote
ECMFA Opening 9:00 - 9:10 Sahar Kokaly and Davide Di Ruscio
Keynote: Democratization of software development using Low code 9:10 - 10:30 Toine Hurkmans, Chief Architect at Mendix

10:30

Coffee break

11:00

SESSION I (Chair: Gerson Sunye)
Managing Reputation in Collaborative Social Computing Applications 11:00 - 11:30 Nathalie Moreno, Alejandro Perez-Vereda and Antonio Vallecillo
Mobile Modeling with Real-Time Collaboration Support 11:30 - 12:00 Max Härtwig and Sebastian Götz
Modelling Agile Backlogs as Composable Artefacts to support Developers and Product Owners 12:00 - 12:30 Sebastien Mosser, Corinne Pulgar and Vladimir Reinharz

12:30

Lunch break

14:00

SESSION II (Chair: Antonio Vallecillo)
Learning from Code Repositories to Recommend Model Classes 14:00 - 14:30 Thibaut Capuano, Houari Sahraoui, Benoît Frénay and Benoît Vanderose
Semantic Differencing of Use Case Diagrams 14:30 - 15:00 Oliver Kautz, Bernhard Rumpe and Louis Wachtmeister
Structural consistency between a system model and its implementation: a design science study in industry 15:00 - 15:30 Robbert Jongeling, Johan Fredriksson, Jan Carlson, Federico Ciccozzi and Antonio Cicchetti

15:30

Coffee break

16:00

SESSION III (Chair: Alfonso Pierantonio)
A Query-based Approach for Verifying UML Class Diagrams with OCL Invariants 16:00 - 16:30 Hao Wu
Human-in-the-Loop Large-Scale Model Transformations with the VICToRy Debugger 16:30 - 17:00 Nils Weidmann, Enes Yigitbas, Anthony Anjorin, Ankita Srivastava and Jane Jose
Vaultage: Automatic Generation of Secure Communication around Decentralised User-Managed Data Vaults 17:00 - 17:30 Alfa Yohannis, Alfonso de la Vega and Dimitris Kolovos

17:30

Day 1 Closing

Thursday 7 July 2022

9:00

ICGT Keynote

10:30

Coffee break

11:00

SESSION IV (Chair: Houari Sahraoui)
Modeling Capabilities of Digital Twin Platforms - Old Wine in New Bottles? 11:00 - 11:30 Jérôme Pfeiffer, Daniel Lehner, Andreas Wortmann and Manuel Wimmer
The Language of SysML v2 under the Magnifying Glass 11:30 - 12:00 Nico Jansen, Jérôme Pfeiffer, Bernhard Rumpe, David Schmalzing and Andreas Wortmann
ECMFA Closing 12:00 - 12:30 Sahar Kokaly and Davide Di Ruscio

Keynote details

ToineHurkmans

Democratization of software development using Low code

Download the slides

Abstract: Within Enterprises, software development and operations is controlled within the IT domain. The gap between Business and IT enfolds two ways. First the speed in which IT can keep up with faster changing business and second the (lack of) understanding between business and IT. Low code application platforms can bridge this gap. First by increasing the speed in which applications can be developed. Second by enabling the business to (co)develop and manage applications themselves, without having engineering knowledge and skills. Software development will become part of the business domain, democratizing software development no longer solely being owned by IT. This creates opportunities as well as risks for both Business and IT. It is still unknown what the impact is, however it is clear Enterprises will need and therefore use Low code application platforms to meet the growing demand for applications as well as the ability to quickly adapt IT systems to support business requirements. One of the challenges to be addressed is the interoperability of Low code applications within a software system. Another challenge regards governance, especially on how to control security on data made available through Low code applications as being developed and managed by the Business.

Toine Hurkmans is Chief Architect of Mendix, a Siemens Company and Global Leader in Low Code Application Platforms. He has over 30 years of experience within software engineering and software architecture of Financial, ERP, CRM, HRM & Payroll software systems. The last 10 years he mainly worked on the transition of on-premise software systems to SaaS and Cloud- based environments. Nowadays his main focus lies on the architecture of hybrid software systems in which Low code applications can be developed, deployed and operated.