1 Introduction

Following the stimulating 10th International Conference on Model and Data Engineering (MEDI 2021) [1], which took place remotely in Tallinn, Estonia, in June 2021, we are excited to announce our proposal to edit a "Theme Section" for the International Journal on Software and Systems Modeling (SoSyM). This theme section will be dedicated to showcasing the recent results from the Data and Models communities, with a particular emphasis on the significance of the 10th edition of MEDI.

Data and models challenges In the era of "Data Science and Advanced Analytics," there is a noticeable race to create data-driven intelligent systems across various domains, including business, finance, healthcare, environment, cybersecurity, and more. This surge in development is a result of the massive influx of data from various sources. It plays a pivotal role in enhancing value for both companies and individuals. Achieving valuable systems in this context relies on two essential components: data and models.

The data dimension primarily falls under the domain of data science, which encompasses a range of disciplines like machine learning, statistics, data mining, databases, and distributed systems. Realizing this value often involves enriching input data with external resources such as knowledge graphs. The success of these techniques hinges on the quality of the input data and the consideration of non-functional properties, including legal, ethical, and economic aspects.

On the flip side, modeling plays a crucial role in the field of data science as it encompasses all the steps within the data science workflow. When it comes to data provenance and ensuring data quality, models play a significant role in delivering solutions that are independent of specific vendors. Furthermore, at the algorithmic level, models serve as a means to elucidate the underlying mechanisms of the methods, algorithms employed, and their explainability. This transparency is essential for system designers, users, regulators, and citizens as it fosters trust and accountability.

MEDI objectives The MEDI conference was inaugurated in 2011 through the collaborative efforts of researchers hailing from Euro-Mediterranean countries. It has since successfully garnered the attention of the research communities specializing in data engineering and model engineering.

The primary objective of the MEDI conference series is to serve as a platform for the dissemination of research achievements within the realms of models and data. MEDI provides an international forum for the presentation of research related to models and data, and the exploration of their advanced applications. MEDI also places a significant emphasis on fostering the establishment of scientific networks spanning North–South collaborations, facilitating projects, encouraging faculty and student exchanges, nurturing interactions, and promoting research collaborations.

A significant milestone in the history of MEDI occurred in 2021 when CORE indexed the conference, elevating its recognition and status within the academic community.

2 Presentation of the theme section

The current scheme section, titled "The Central Role of Modeling in Designing and Explaining Data-Driven Systems and Software," featured in the Journal of Software and Systems Modeling (SoSyM), has its roots in the initiative to create a theme section in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of MEDI. The choice of SoSyM journal is not harmless; SoSyM has a significant impact and importance on Software and Systems Modeling.

Aims and scopes This theme section of SoSyM aims to cover various approaches to model engineering from a scientific perspective. It is intended to unveil, compile, and disseminate original research, academy, and industry results while also underlying future directions foreseen by the contributors.

We invite submissions from an open call for papers related to the modeling and data engineering fields and extended or modified versions of selected papers accepted at the 10th MEDI conference in Tallinn.

Papers presentation Nine (9) papers were submitted. All submitted papers went through rigorous peer review by a panel of experts. After a competitive process of two rounds of reviews, only one paper received the best recommendations and evaluation by reviewers.

The theme section thus contains a revised and significantly extended version of a keypaper discussed at the MEDI 2021 conference. We invited the keynote speakers of the conference: Marlon Dumas and Prof. Ali Mili to contribute to this theme section with expert voices.

In the paper EMF-Syncer: scalable maintenance of view models over heterogeneous data-centric software systems at run time, Artur Boronat deals with the challenges raised by: model synchronization at run time, multiple model view management, and storing models in heterogeneous data sources.

The author introduces the notion of view models and shows that in-memory program data (named snapshots) can be explicitly represented as view model instances, facilitating the application of MDE technology to program data that may be fetched from heterogeneous data sources. Therefore, data synchronization occurs at the level of feature values by using model views that do not need to be materialized. He elaborates on a synchronization model and technique to build model adapters so that metamodel-agnostic programs can manage them. Java applications and view models atop the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) are targeted. The mechanism has been implemented as EMF-Syncer, to provide deferred initialization of feature values and incremental propagation of updates on data. Performance and scalability have been analyzed from a quantitative point of view. The author shows that the EMF-Syncer facilitates the automatic extraction of editable model instances from program snapshots (in-memory program data). When there are edits in the model instance, the propagation of changes to the original program snapshot is incremental, significantly reducing the computational cost of maintaining both inconsistent states. The EMF-Syncer can also leverage third-party libraries like Spring Data to extract model instances from various data sources. Overall, the EMF-Syncer is implemented as a tool, available via GitHub, as an IDE-independent library.

In the expert voice entitled On The Persistent Rumors of the Programmer’s Imminent Demise, Prof. Ali Mili (the MEDI 2021 keynote speaker) and his colleagues shed light on the development of languages and programming artifacts (functions, modules, objects, components, and models) during the last decades until recent trends with large language models; they give, by the way, the community the opportunity to analyze a trajectory of research topics related to modeling and programming. They show how topics such as software specification and verification remain intractable issues in the computer science and software engineering communities.

In the expert voice entitled From Process Mining to Augmented Process Execution, Prof. Marlon Dumas (the MEDI 2021 keynote speaker) and his colleagues reveal one evolution through the last decades of research around data and their processing, from process mining and business activity monitoring via techniques for discovery, analysis, and monitoring of processes, and more recently, machine learning models ability to predict future states of processes and accordingly automated techniques to improve their performance. The authors foresee the evolution of techniques for continuous and automated improvement and adaptation of business processes; new challenges are then envisioned, such as ensuring the correct execution of processes in the business system.

3 Wrapping up remarks

We thank all the authors who submitted their work for this theme section. We are particularly grateful to our expert voices authors for their contributions, and to the article’s author in this theme section, who has helped highlight an example of research in the field of model and data engineering.

We express our deepest thanks to all the reviewers, who spent a lot of time reading the articles and making substantial suggestions for improvement; this not only helped the contributors to improve their work (even if they were not retained after the second round of reviews) but also finally resulted in a high-quality theme section.

Last but not least, we would like to thank Professor Bernhard Rumpe, co-editor-in-chief of the International Journal on Software and Systems Modeling (SoSyM), for accepting our proposal for a Theme Section, supporting for a long time our Model and Data Engineering Conference, and for assisting us whenever required. We would like to thank the SoSyM Assistant Editor Martin Schindler, for their continuous and effective assistance during the whole review process. The complete International Program Committee of this theme section is listed below.

Abouaissa, Abdelhafid

University of Haute Alsace, France

Alexandridis, Georgios

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

Amaral, Vasco

Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal

Bakirtzis, Georgios

University of Texas at Austin, USA

Basu, Samik

Iowa State University of Science and Technology, USA

van Beest, Nick R. T. P.

CSIRO, Australia

Brahmia, Mohamed-El-Amine

CESI LINEACT, Strasbourg, France

Bruneliere, Hugo

IMT-Atlantique, France

Cetina, Carlos

Universidad San Jorgec(Spain) and University College London (UK)

Chouali, Samir

Université de Franche-Comté, France

Frappier, Marc

Université de Sherbrooke (Québec), Canada

Giese, Holger

Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Engineering, Potsdam, Germany

Gope, Prosanta

University of Sheffield, UK

Guanciale, Roberto

Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden

Kalenkova, Anna

The University of Adelaide, Australia

Karagoz, Pinar

Middle East Technical University, Turkey

Kobayashi, Tsutomu

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Japan

Koumpis, adamantios

RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Mernik, Marjan

University of Maribor, Slovenia

Ouchani, Samir

CESI LINEACT, France

Polini, Andrea

University of Camerino, Italia

Preciado, Juan Carlos

Universidad de Extremadura, Spain

Su, Jianwen

University of California Santa Barbara, U.S.A.

Syriani, Eugene

University of Montreal, Canada

Troya, Javier

Universidad de Málaga, Spain

Vogelsang, Andreas

University of Cologne, Germany