Manifesto - Model Engineering for Complex Systems

TL;DR

This paper discusses the potential of Model Driven Engineering (MDE) as a promising approach to develop and manage complex systems, which are increasingly prevalent but lack dedicated engineering methods.

Contribution

It explores the applicability of MDE principles to complex systems and summarizes workshop discussions on various approaches and visions for this integration.

Findings

MDE offers a promising abstraction level for complex systems.

Workshop discussions highlight diverse approaches to applying MDE.

Preliminary evidence suggests MDE can improve complex system management.

Abstract

Complex systems are hard to define. Nevertheless they are more and more frequently encountered. Examples include a worldwide airline traffic management system, a global telecommunication or energy infrastructure or even the whole legacy portfolio accumulated for more than thirty years in a large insurance company. There are currently few engineering methods and tools to deal with them in practice. The purpose of this Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop on Model Engineering for Complex Systems was to study the applicability of Model Driven Engineering (MDE) to the development and management of complex systems. MDE is a software engineering field based on few simple and sound principles. Its power stems from the assumption of considering everything - engineering artefacts, manipulations of artefacts, etc - as a model. Our intuition was that MDE may provide the right level of abstraction to move the study of complex systems from an informal goal to more concrete grounds. In order to provide first evidence in support of this intuition, the workshop studied different visions and different approaches to the development and management of different kinds of complex systems. This note presents the summary of the discussions.