In the realm of industrial software development, DevOps has emerged as the preferred approach for handling the highly iterative software production process. DevOps refers to the tight integration of development and operations activities, with Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) being pivotal methodologies for ensuring the iterative delivery of high-quality software. To achieve CI/CD, pipelines of activities are deployed using commercial tools. Due to the dynamic nature of these tools, CI/CD pipelines are often migrated to new versions or even new tools. Since this is mostly a manual process, it is a cumbersome and error-prone activity. To assist software engineers during this process, we propose a novel approach that leverages model-driven engineering (MDE) to support the migration of CI/CD pipelines. Our approach is inspired by the traditional reengineering horseshoe model, which abstracts existing pipeline artifacts into a comprehensive model as an intermediate representation. From these models, we can then generate semantic-equivalent pipelines for any novel CI/CD tool. Thus, our main contribution comprises a metamodel designed to represent the structure of existing CI/CD pipelines and build the foundation for MDE-based migration of CI/CD pipelines. We validated our metamodel by successfully modeling 400 existing pipelines. This evaluation demonstrated a 100% applicability rate when applied to configuration files from technologies that collectively account for over 92% of CI/CD scripts in use. Furthermore, we conducted a detailed case study demonstrating the practical applicability of our approach in real-world migration scenarios. Finally, we demonstrate that our metamodel promotes equivalence between an original pipeline and a new one generated from it in a different technology by showing through test cases that the execution traces of both pipelines are identical.

Abstract Modeling is often associated with complex and heavy tooling, leading to a negative perception among practitioners. However, alternative paradigms, such as everything-as-code or low-code, are gaining acceptance due to their perceived ease of use. This paper explores the dichotomy between these perceptions through the lens of “modeler experience” (MX). MX includes factors such as user experience, motivation, integration, collaboration and versioning, and language complexity. We examine the relationships between these factors and their impact on different modeling usage scenarios. Our findings highlight the importance of considering MX when understanding how developers interact with modeling tools and the complexities of modeling and associated tooling.

Current document version control systems (VCS) are prone to impersonation in changes to the artefacts and their update history, risking its credibility. This is particularly problematic in specific application domains such as in Education, where teachers have to have the means to prevent and detect students' unethical behaviour or fraud, as grading is one of the essential pillars of trust in the correction and fairness in the conduct of the educational system. Therefore, there is a need for a completely secure, trustworthy and easy-to-use version management of digital artefacts, which can be used to introduce students to the world of version control. We thus propose a blockchain-based solution for version control of engineering artefacts. The goal is to facilitate collaboration in a multi-user area, like the education field, and track changes in a trusted and secure manner. As a proof of concept, we designed and implemented a solution using the Hyperledger Fabric Network to govern and regulate file version control functions among students and teachers. Our prototype is hosted on the cloud and uses Git and GitHub to hash and store the different artefact versions and the blockchain network to keep all the changes in a perpetual and immutable way tracing to their respective authors non-prone to forgery. Besides constructing the proof of concept tool prototype, we conducted a usability experiment. The results of the usability tests were positive, with users with limited experience in version control systems starting to use and comprehend the solution in little time. The next step will be to generalize and evolve this tool to other application scenarios where trustworthy tracing is essential.

Learning OMG's Unified Modelling Language (UML) can have a steep learning curve. It is a General Purpose System Modelling Language composed of several structural and behavioural sublanguages with relatively complex notations to allow for the specification of several system views. In the course of their learning experience, students frequently have difficulty understanding the semantics of UML models. We argue that the learning experience can be greatly improved if suitable feedback mechanisms (such as open-source lightweight tools that integrate existing simulation tools) are introduced along the incremental try-and-run process. UML naturally offers separation of concerns (thanks to its relatively independent sublanguages), allowing students to understand how to model a software system without the need to understand all of the 14 UML diagrams altogether. This paper describes a simulation environment of UML using and integrating state-of-the-art technology to simulate different UML sublanguages for describing system behaviour, implemented to support the teaching of UML.

Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) has emerged as a methodology, grounded in theory and tooling, to design and develop software systems with models at their core. MDE makes use of modelling languages, ranging from general-purpose like the standard UML, to dedicated modelling languages like Domain-Specific Modelling Languages. Those are supported by modelling editors, with languages that typically offer graphical and textual notations as concrete syntax. However, being concentrated on vision, these tools ignore other senses and communication channels like audition (voice and sound) that could be used in industrial settings, for accessibility purposes, or simply as complementary to the visual approaches.We are building a modelling workbench platform that, similarly to modelling workbenches dealing with diagrammatic languages, allows a software language engineer to model a domain-specific language and generate a voice/audio editor where the domain end-users can operate (Create, Read, Update and Delete), and navigate diagrams through speech recognition and voice synthesis tools.One of the problems of editors that use voice is the fixed interaction paradigms that contribute to poor user experience. In this paper, we propose an interaction mechanism that can recognise vocal and non-vocal sounds as well as gestures adding two senses in the definition of Domain-Specific Languages’ concrete syntax definition, not usually explored in the model-driven tools. we have built a prototype and we carried out a pilot empirical study, with preliminary positive results, to access the presented prototype in terms of usability, productivity and learning curve.

Context: Managing Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) in software projects is challenging, and projects that adopt Model-Driven Development (MDD) are no exception. Although several methods and techniques have been proposed to face this challenge, there is still little evidence on how NFRs are handled in MDD by practitioners. Knowing more about the state of the practice may help researchers to steer their research and practitioners to improve their daily work. Objective: In this paper, we present our findings from an interview-based survey conducted with practitioners working in 18 different companies from 6 European countries. From a practitioner's point of view, the paper shows what barriers and benefits the management of NFRs as part of the MDD process can bring to companies, how NFRs are supported by MDD approaches, and which strategies are followed when (some) types of NFRs are not supported by MDD approaches. Results: Our study shows that practitioners perceive MDD adoption as a complex process with little to no tool support for NFRs, reporting productivity and maintainability as the types of NFRs expected to be supported when MDD is adopted. But in general, companies adapt MDD to deal with NFRs. When NFRs are not supported, the generated code is sometimes changed manually, thus compromising the maintainability of the software developed. However, the interviewed practitioners claim that the benefits of using MDD outweight the extra effort required by these manual adaptations. Conclusion: Overall, the results indicate that it is important for practitioners to handle `NFRs in MDD, but further research is necessary in order to lower the barrier for supporting a broad spectrum of NFRs with MDD. Still, much conceptual and tool implementation work seems to be necessary to lower the barrier of integrating the broad spectrum of NFRs in practice.

The process of in-class control and monitoring of students' examination activities is traditionally conducted manually, without the support of technology. The workflow can include tasks for attendance record or dishonesty control. The tasks include identifying the students before, during and after the beginning of the evaluation activity. Can also include examination room allocation to the activity, as well as the distribution of students per available examination rooms and distribution of students inside the room according to a classroom seating plan (which can have a varied setup). However, with a large number of students, the execution of these tasks becomes challenging to perform efficiently, requiring innovative techniques or tools to support them effectively. In this work, we propose the design and implementation of a mobile system based on IoT technology and MIFARE student's cards to support the lecturer efficiently during the examination workflow. We propose the use of current indoor location technology, and we build a proof of concept prototype, validating it in a real educational environment.

The widespread use of IoTs, as cheap and immersive technology, is enabling a wide range of daily life systems where Humans play a central role. It is commonly accepted that Humans sometimes present non-reliable behaviour. On the other hand, Gamification is becoming a common technique in system development to integrate business logic and induce Humans to accomplish certain goals and enforce systems reliability. Due to human nature, the evolution of game logic becomes an essential aspect of such systems to keep users engaged and participative. In this paper, we illustrate and discuss evolution in the particular scenario of a running Office Automation System in our open space. Here, the Human plays different roles such as an actuator, source of system input, a controller (decision maker), or simply environment (Human-in-the-loop). The mentioned system is the result of partially retrofitting a room of a forty years old building. It runs with a dynamic context scenario (that motivates different setups) and is formed by a heterogeneous set of IoTs. Those types of equipment are integrated to mainly accomplish two, sometimes conflicting, main goals: energy efficiency and Human comfort. As we will describe next, given the complexity of our system, various system's requirements need to be fulfilled at the same time. Those will dynamically change during runtime to contribute to both efficiency and participants' engagement. Not only the game requirements of the system evolve, but also the participants' behaviour change. We have consulted the open space's occupants on their daily routines and their preferences towards Gamification and gamified systems, particularly considering their social settings. They were also consulted on their views towards achieving energy efficiency in the open space. The results of this assessment are presented in this paper. The major suggestions were integrated into the current design of the system. We considered those that could contribute to the system's efficiency and reliability according to the system's goals. Besides, we also considered those that led to the use of several game techniques for motivating and improving the Humans' participation.

Context: The OutSystems Platform is a development environment composed of several DSLs, used to specify, quickly build and validate web and mobile applications. The DSLs allow users to model different perspectives such as interfaces and data models, define custom business logic and construct process models. Problem: The DSL for process modelling (Business Process Technology (BPT)), has a low adoption rate and is perceived as having usability problems hampering its adoption. This is problematic given the language maintenance costs. Method: We used a combination of interviews, a critical review of BPT using the "Physics of Notation" and empirical evaluations of BPT using the System Usability Scale (SUS) and the NASA Task Load indeX (TLX), to develop a new version of BPT, taking these inputs and Outsystems' engineers culture into account. Results: Evaluations conducted with 25 professional software engineers showed an increase of the semantic transparency on the new version, from 31% to 69%, an increase in the correctness of responses, from 51% to 89%, an increase in the SUS score, from 42.25 to 64.78, and a decrease of the TLX score, from 36.50 to 20.78. These differences were statistically significant. Conclusions: These results suggest the new version of BPT significantly improved the developer experience of the previous version. The end users background with OutSystems had a relevant impact on the final concrete syntax choices and achieved usability indicators.

Model-driven engineering relies on effective collaboration between different teams which introduces complex model management challenges. DSE Merge aims to efficiently merge model versions created by various collaborators using search-based exploration of solution candidates that represent conflict-free merged models guided by domain-specific knowledge. In this paper, we report how we systematically evaluated the efficiency of the DSE Merge technique from the user point of view using a reactive experimental Software engineering approach. The empirical tests included the involvement of the intended end users (i.e. engineers), namely undergraduate students, which were expected to confirm the impact of design decisions. In particular, we asked users to merge the different versions of the same model using DSE Merge when compared to using Diff Merge. The experiment showed that to use DSE Merge participant required lower cognitive effort, and expressed their preference and satisfaction with it.

The primary scientific targets of the European COST Action Multi-Paradigm Modelling for Cyber-Physical Systems (MPM4CPS) are: i) the conceptualization of techniques and tools for improving interoperability; ii) the development of new ontologies and formalisms (and the links between them) to deal with the heterogeneity; and, iii) to perform the integration of the problems resulting from several application domains, under a common MPM4CPS umbrella. The action also aims at crystallizing MPM4CPS contents into a suitable format for educational purposes. This entails to create the base for a European Master and PhD program in MPM4CPS involving several European leading Universities and setting up the respective discipline roadmap facing the challenge of development mutually recognized cross-domain expertise based study program in CPS. This paper offers a methodology for the creation of CPS expert profile for educational purposes, provides an analysis of results of an initial survey of experts in the field and sets up a discussion about the next steps of the research. The paper depicts the work in a progress.

There is currently a lack of Requirements Engineering (RE) approaches applied to, or supporting, the development of a Domain-Specific Language (DSL) taking into account the environment in which it is to be used. We present a model-based RE approach to support DSL development with a focus on usability concerns. RDAL is a RE fragment language that can be complemented with other languages to support RE and design. USE-ME is a model driven approach for DSLs usability evaluation which is integrable with a DSL development approach. We combine RDAL and a new DSL, named DSSL, that we created for the specification of DSL-based systems. Integrated with this combination we add USE-ME to support usability evaluation. This combination of existing languages and tools provides a comprehensive RE approach for DSL development. We illustrate the approach with the development of the Gyro DSL for programming robots.

Deception-based defense relies on intentional actions employed to induce erroneous inferences on attackers. Existing deception approaches are included in the software development process in an ad-hoc fashion, and are fundamentally realized as single tools or entire solutions repackaged as honeypot machines. We propose a systematic goal-driven approach to include deception tactics early in the software development process so that conflicts and risks can be found in the initial phases of the development, reducing costs of ill-planed decisions. The process integrates three phases: system modeling (producing a goal model of the application domain), security modeling (producing a threat model specifying the typical security concerns from the attacker perspective), and deception modeling (producing a deception tactic model, a variability model, and deception story models). The feasibility of the proposed approach is shown via a case study where deception defense strategies are designed for a students' presence control system for our University.

Model-Driven Development (MDD) is no longer a novel development paradigm. It has become mature from a research perspective and recent studies show its adoption in industry. Still, some issues remain a challenge. Among them, we are interested in the treatment of non-functional requirements (NFRs) in MDD processes. Very few MDD approaches have been reported to deal with NFRs (and they do it in a limited way). However, it is clear that NFRs need to be considered somehow in the final product of the MDD process. To better understand how NFRs are integrated into the existing MDD approaches, we have initiated the NFR4MDD project, a multi-national empirical study, based on interviews with companies working on MDD projects. Our project aims at surveying the state of the practice for this topic. In this paper, we summarize our research protocol and present the current status of our study. The discussion will focus on the peculiarities of our study's context and organization involving about 20 researchers from 8 European countries.

It is typical in the domain of digital games to have many development problems due to its increasing complexity. Those difficulties include: i)little code reuse in order to develop a cross-platform game; and ii)performing game's verification through extensive and expensive tests. This of course results in low productivity in the development (evolution and maintenance) of game solutions.

There are several approaches in Requirements Engineering (RE) for obtaining requirements according to some specific decomposition criteria (e.g. viewpoints, goals). One of those is Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering (GORE), which has become increasingly popular in the recent years. GORE uses goals to elicit, develop, structure, specify, analyze, negotiate, document and modify requirements. However, the definition of a goal is very fragmented in the community with several different modeling languages, methods and non interoperable tools available making it more difficult to be more quickly accepted by industry. In this article we introduce our proposal for unifying into one modeling language a family of GORE languages named Unified Goal oriented Language (UGL). It presently incorporates the concepts of the main approaches, i.e., KAOS and I*, allowing us to specify models that interrelate concepts of their corresponding languages. This modeling language is based on the integration of the different languages metamodels.

Designing a DSML implies binding the syntactical concepts of the problem domain with the semantics of a solution domain. Previous work presented a formal framework for language composition where language syntactical patterns (expressed by metamodels) along with their semantics (expressed by transformation models) are combined as small reusable building blocks in a constructive manner, in order to achieve the desired expressiveness for DSMLs. This article refines the framework, as well as showing its application through a case study led in collaboration with CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research).

Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering (GORE) has received increasing attention over the past few years. There are several goal-oriented approaches, each one using different kinds of models. We believe that it would be useful to relate them or even transform them automatically, in order to, for example, smooth the process of migration from one model to another. In this paper we propose the definition and implementation of goal model transformations between i* and KAOS. This approach will contribute to relate the concepts of i* and KAOS models and will help, for example, a development team in making the decision on which approach to follow, according to the nature of the project.

Requirements Engineering (RE) is the branch of Software Engineering dealing with requirements for software systems. A software requirement is a property which must be exhibited by software developed or adapted to solve a particular problem. Within RE, there are several branches of methodologies for obtaining requirements, among which we have Goal-Oriented Requirements Engineering (GORE), that uses goals to treat requirements.

Currently, physicists working in high energy physics experiments have to write their queries in general purpose programming languages using complex frameworks for accessing the data. This distracts them from their actual work, namely data analysis, and reduces their productivity significantly. We have improved this situation by designing and implementing the first visual query language specific to this domain. Our goal was to provide a tool enabling physicists to formulate queries in their own terms and notation. In this paper we focus on the formal definition of our visual query language (including syntax and semantics). The meanings of our operators are well-defined by means of translational semantics, i.e., we map all elements of our language to a well-known NF2 algebra. We conclude with a discussion of the advantages of this formal design approach.