Workshop program
Detailed program
Session 1
The Evolutionary Life of Metamodels
Authors: Alfonso Pierantonio
Presenter: Alfonso Pierantonio
9:00-10:00
Metamodels are not static blueprints but living artifacts that evolve in step with their domains, the growing insights and awareness of their designers, and the demands of ever more ambitious requirements. As with any other software, their development is inherently iterative":" abstractions are introduced, refined, and tested in cycles that call for rapid feedback. For such an iterative process to be effective, co-evolution must be live and must not disrupt the development workflow. Yet, the moment these iterations affect dependent models, transformations, or editors, co-evolution comes into play. Despite being investigated for a long time, co-evolution still remains a difficult task, riddled with challenges such as lossless adaptation, consistency preservation, and integration into existing workflows. The complexity is heightened by the fact that not only models must be adapted but also their editors, at the bare minimum, to remain usable after metamodel changes. When co-evolution is treated as an afterthought, handled through migration scripts, ad hoc fixes, or disruptive regeneration, it breaks the modeling flow. Designers are forced to leave the creative loop, adapting tools and repairing models before resuming their actual task. This keynote explores the evolutionary life of metamodels, emphasizing the need to integrate co-evolution seamlessly into the development process. Drawing from recent advances in reflective platforms such as Jjodel, I will show how transparent, lossless, and user-guided mechanisms can transform metamodel evolution from a source of disruption into a natural driver of adaptation. By reframing evolution as an always-on capability rather than a costly intervention, we can sustain workflows that remain fluid, resilient, and accessible, whether in education, research, or industrial practice.
SlidesHow and Why is Change Modeled? – A Scoping Literature Review
Authors: Thomas Weber, Johan Cederbladh, Sebastian Weber, Arne Lange, Antonio Cicchetti and Ralf Reussner
Presenter: Thomas Weber
10:00-10:30
Models and metamodels change, entailing efforts to keep related artifacts consistent, i.e., to reflect the implications of the changes on them. In order to assess these implications, the changes or evolution steps themselves are, in most cases, of highest interest, compared to the states of the models or metamodels. While the states can be used to derive the changes, some information on the actual changes might get lost, e.g., whether an empty class has been renamed or deleted and readded. The use of deltas to describe changes is not limited to models and metamodels, but is also employed in other research areas. To get an overview of the used concepts and how they compare, we did a scoping literature review in the field of computer science, focused on modeling and related fields. We compared the different approaches in regard to how they model the change, what different dimensions they model, their ability to model atomic or composite changes, their completeness in modeling all possible changes, as well as their purpose. This overview allows for more efficient concept re-use across domains in regard to the modeling of changes and the different use cases realized with them.
Session 2
Towards Model-Based Decision-Telling":" Design Evolution Through Decision Nodes
Authors: Nidhal Selmi, Jean-Michel Bruel, Sébastien Mosser and Matthieu Crespo
Presenter: TBA
11:00-11:25
Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) emerged as a response to the rising complexity of engineered systems, promising to reduce development times by improving consistency, collaboration, and traceability. While MBSE is effective in consolidating design artefacts into the single source of truth (SSOT), research addressing the evolution of these models during system development remains limited. In this paper, we address this gap by proposing a framework for capturing the evolution of MBSE models in a storytelling approach through the design decisions that drive this evolution. Our approach adopts a recording of model evolution with version control systems and structuring decision information in natural language Y statements to ensure traceability between the model incremental development and underlying decision nodes.
SlidesYANG-APR":" Towards Supporting Evolution in Model-driven Network Management Systems
Authors: Hesham Elabd, Juergen Dingel, Robert Lee and Ali Tizghadam
Presenter: TBA
11:25-11:50
In model-driven network ecosystems, high-level specifications such as YANG data models define APIs that engineers extend with custom code and handlers. When the model evolves, it can become misaligned with its API implementation, which typically requires manual, costly, and error-prone realignment, highlighting the need for automated repair. This paper presents our ongoing work on an automated repair approach to resynchronize evolving YANG models with their API implementations, using a four-stage pipeline":" (i) localize compatible-vs-breaking diffs between the current and updated models, (ii) enrich each diff record with contextual information, (iii) instantiate precise transformation rules for every change, and (iv) apply those rules to generate a repaired version of the code, complete with a reviewable change log for engineer validation. To explore the feasibility of this approach, we have developed an initial prototype—YANG-APR—that targets five common model evolution scenarios":" datatype change, node rename, endpoint URL rename, endpoint removal, and endpoint addition. We illustrate the approach through two representative cases":" a breaking datatype modification and a non-breaking endpoint addition. These early results show promising potential to facilitate model-implementation coevolution, providing a foundation for continued development and broader evaluation.
GEM":" Towards a Model-Driven Graphical Editor Migration Framework
Authors: Mohamadreza Sabeghi, Richard F. Paige and Dimitris Kolovos
Presenter: TBA
11:50-12:15
As graphical modeling editors evolve, legacy tools face growing obsolescence, prompting the need for effective migration strategies. This paper introduces GEM, a model-driven migration framework that leverages a pivot model to enable reusable and extensible transformations across heterogeneous platforms. By preserving detailed visualization semantics and simplifying migration through an intermediary representation, GEM facilitates modernization of legacy editors. The paper also reviews existing pivot model approaches, outlines evaluation criteria for migration frameworks, and presents a prototype implementation to validate the concept.
Closing discussion & wrap-up
Authors: TBA
Presenter: TBA
12:15-12:30
Closing discussion & wrap-up