Systematic Development of Collaborative Blended Modeling Environments

Collaborative model-driven software engineering addresses the complexities of developing software systems by prioritizing models as core artifacts and leveraging the collective expertise of diverse stakeholders. To effectively realize this approach, the employed modeling environments must be equipped with features that support and enhance collaboration. These environments should, among other capabilities, provide support for multiple notation types, enabling stakeholders to engage with models using their preferred notation or the notation most appropriate for their tasks. Additionally, they should offer multiple views and perspectives that allow stakeholders to interact with pertinent information only, and implement access control mechanisms to ensure information security. However, the adoption of these features can be challenging, partly because of their resource-intensive and tedious development nature, as well as the necessity for continuous updates to keep up with the evolution of modeling languages. This doctoral thesis proposes a model-driven approach to address this chal- lenge by facilitating the development of blended modeling environments featur- ing multiple views and ensuring modeled information security. The proposed framework leverages automation to reduce the manual effort and expertise tradi- tionally required for i) the provision of synchronization mechanisms between graphical and textual notations for blended modeling, ii) the provision of syn- chronization mechanisms between view models and base model in multi-view modeling, and iii) the consistent definition and enforcement of access permis- sions. This research, therefore, lowers the barriers to adopting these collaborative features by facilitating their development and evolution in face of changes to underlying modeling languages.