Welcome to Uwe Aßmann's Home Page

Prof. Dr. Uwe Aßmann
Professor for Software Engineering
Technische Universität Dresden
Fakultät Informatik    (nice brochure)
Institut für Software- und Multimediatechnik (SMT)
01062 Dresden
Germany
 Uwe Aßmann's Picture
mailto: Uwe.Assmann(AT)tu-dresden.de
http://web.inf.tu-dresden.de/~ua1
http://st.inf.tu-dresden.de
https://www.facebook.com/stdresden
Phone: +49-351-463-38463
Fax: +49-351-463-38459
Location: Nöthnitzer Strasse 46, 2nd floor west wing, room 2087, 01069 Dresden


Last updated 2017/11/01

Forecast

News

Books

Book "Models at Runtime" Book "Models at Runtime" Book "Ontology-Driven Software Engineering" Book "Invasive Software Composition" Reasoning Web 2007 MDAFA 2004, Linköping Software Composition 2005

Research Areas

My main research areas are the following. Since software engineering is a discipline between theory and practice, we try to balance basic research with technology research and application-driven research.

Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE) and Snippet Composition (Invasive Software Composition)

Software composition integrates the following areas of software engineering: aspect-oriented development, architecture languages, view-based development, and generic programming. Invasive Software Composition (ISC) is a technology for template and snippet composition (fragment composition). Plainly speaking, it is an advanced form of template metaprogramming (TMP), but it can do much more for you. Our group has worked on the following type-safe techniques for snippet composition and for constrution of program and model weavers:
  • With Universal grammar-based ISC for textual languages, you can produce for a given grammar a snippet composition system. With this, you can enhance any language with template programming features like in BETA or C++ and build powerful snippet metaprogramming environments. Applications are [ Safe Template Languages ] and "Component Models for Semantic Web Languages". These works describe a general framework of grammar-universal ISC, i.e., how to take a grammar and generate from it a component model and snippet composition system for its language.
  • Universal metamodel-based ISC for textual and graphical languages is the extended approach working with EMF metamodels [ Extending Grammars and Metamodels for Reuse - the Reuseware approach ] [ JOT Paper on Reuseware ]
  • Orchestration style sheets (OSS) is our newest approach for styling the parallelization and distribution of sequential programs (progressive parallelization). Style sheets are a very general form of rewriting-based aspects, controlled by attribute grammars. [First Paper on OSS]
  • Attribute-driven ISC: With attribute-driven ISC, weavers can be built for Aspect-Orientation Development (AOSD) and Aspect-Oriented Modeling (AOM). Remote Attribute Grammars describe data- and control-flow between remote parts of the syntax tree of the program. The theory was worked out by Dr. Sven Karol in his PhD thesis "Well-Formed and Scalable Invasive Software Composition" [pdf]. The corresponding demonstrator tool is the SkAT composition tool.
  • Reference-attribute grammar driven rewriting ( RACR): if analysis phase of a reference attribute grammar are interchanged with rewriting, a novel method for context-sensitive term rewriting results. The RACR toolset is managed by Christoff Bürger, now in Lund, Sweden.

Model-Driven Software Engineering and Context- and Role-Based Modeling

Megamodels and Model-driven software development (MDSD) in Technical Spaces

  • Model synchronization and round-trip engineering This technology keeps a set of models and codes consistent, so that they are called a megamodel.
  • Role-based Modeling and Metamodeling: Roles capture context-sensitive object behavior and can be applied to objects, models, and metamodels (for language engineering). Role systems automatically adapt to context changes.
  • Ontology-Driven Software Development (ODSD): ODSD couples ontologies to software models, to be able to use advanced reasoning technologies in requirements engineering or design. Dr. Katja Siegemund has worked on the employment of ontologies in requirements specification [pdf]. The MOST project produced a Springer book on ODSD.
  • Course Model-Driven Software Development in Technical Spaces (MOST) summarizing the most modern literature in the research area. It discusses macromodels, megamodels, technical spaces and other ways to develop REAL software.

Software Product Lines

Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) maintains a configuraiton model in the problem space together with a system in the solution space (component space).
  • Feature Modeling
  • Language Families based on Feature Models and Role-based component models. This was the PhD of Christian Wende who modeled language families with feature models.
  • Hyper-feature models. Christoph Seidl developed them in his PhD.
  • Views on Feature Models. Julia Schroeter worked them out for multi-tenant cloud-based software.

Requirements, Testing, and Documentation

  • Ontologies in requirements specification (Katja Siegemund's PhD)
  • OCL and business rules: the chair has an OCL compiler, the Dresden OCL Toolkit
  • Test automation for cyber-physical systems and robots (MATE System, Georg Püschel)
  • Documentation engineering (elucidative development), PhD thesis of Dr. Andreas Bartho

Model-Driven Robot Software Engineering (MORSE)

MORSE is the queen discipline of systems engineering, because constructing, modeling, and programming of robots is hard. Since 2006, the chair is involved in MORSE; first with MDSD for Lego Mindstorms robots in the SuReal project, then for NAO robots in the Qualitune project, then for TurtleBots in the VICCI project, and then for KUKA LBR in the T-RoX project.

Smart Ecosystems (Software and Innovation Ecosystems)

  • Innovation Ecosystems: Coopetition, cluster and innovation research. Ronny Kaiser and me work in ECSEL-Project IoSense for innovation management.
  • Feature Modeling of Open Software Families. Christoph Seidl, now in Braunschweig, did his PhD here.
  • Course Software as a Business (SaaB) discusses how to create software innovations with working business models, also for product lines, product matrices, and software ecosystems
  • Course http://st.inf.tu-dresden.de/teaching/swm (Software Project Management)

Analysis and Transformation

  • Graph rewriting, in particular Edge Addition Rewrite Systems (EARS) and Exhaustive GRS (XGRS) 
    • Port-Graph Rewriting (Johannes Mey)
  • Reference-attribute grammar driven rewriting ( RACR): if analysis phase of a reference attribute grammar are interchanged with rewriting, a novel method for context-sensitive term rewriting results. The RACR toolset is managed by Christoff Bürger, now in Lund, Sweden

Development Environments Tool and Generator Technologies

  • Context-based Petri Nets (Carl Mai)
  • Macromodels are sets of models in heterogeneous IDE that are kept consistent and are amenable for round-trip engineering (Christopher Werner)
  • QMARK is a development environment for development of energy-efficient apps (Claas Wilke)

Publications

[ ST group's publication site | Forschungsinformationssystem TU Dresden | publications on DBLP | publications on google scholar ]

Research Talks

[ Overview of all Talks | Keynotes | Invited Talks | Technical Talks ]

Startups of Alumni of the Chair

For several startups of my PhD students, we have successfully aquired BMBF Exist grants:

Hall of Fame

Ongoing Research Projects

Past Projects

  • T-RoX project (Teaching Robots in SaXony), a Saxonian project improving the teaching material for robotics
  • Resilience Path of cfAED: For compensation of hardware errors in software (2013-2014: Christian Piechnick)
  • The Resubic Lab Dresden comprises several researcher groups on software for the "internet of things". Prof. Aßmann has been elected as its speaker. 
    • SAB project GUIDES on speeding up integer linear programming (Dr. Karsten Wendt)
    • Labcasts in the ResUbic Lab
    • SysPlace (BMBF KMU-initiativ, product lines with augmented reality): Maria Piechnick
    • ZESSY (Zukünftiger Entwurf eingebetteter Systeme) with its subproject QualiTune (Claas Wilke, Jan Reimann, Christian Piechnik, Christian Wende, Sebastian Götz). The other part of ZESSY (EnergyDesign) was completed at the chair of Prof. Kabitzsch
    • VICCI (integration of cyber-physical systems, Prof. Gumhold, Jun.-Prof. Schlegel, Prof. Dachselt)

Current PhD Students

PhD
 		Project
 		Web
Kay Bierzynski
 Role-based learning for the Internet of Things
 Industry PhD student
Frank Rohde
 Pseudonym Roles for Security and Privacy in Fog Computing
 Industry PhD student, RoSI
Mariam Zia
 Emergence in the internet of things RoSI
Dymitro Pukhaiev
 Transformation - Abstraction Framework for Abstraction Refinement and Domain Transformation
Maria Piechnick
 Software architectures for Wearable  Computing in the Internet of Things
 SysPlace project
Romina Kühn
 Mixed-reality apps
Mandy Korzetz
 Mixed-reality interaction patterns
Rene Schöne
 Data-flow-based RACR in Smart Lighting Applications
Carl Mai
 Petri-net based code synthesis for Silicon Nanowire structures
 cfAED Silicon-Nanowire Path
Johannes Mey
 Heterogeneous code generation techniques with orchestration style sheets
Christian Piechnick Role-based model-driven architectural languages for self-adaptive systems
 SMAGS  site
Georg Püschel
 Model-driven Testing of Cyber-Physical Systems
 MATE
Christoff Bürger
 Remote Attribute Grammar Controlled Rewriting (RACR)
 RACR

PhD Alumni

List of PhD alumni

PhD
 Topic
 Traces in the web
Dr. Max Leuthäuser Context and Roles in Scala (defended on Aug 15, 2017)
 RoSI
Dr. Thomas Kühn A role-based modeling language for context-aware applications (defended on March 24, 2017) Projects
Dr. Jan Polowinski
 Ontology-Driven, Guided Visualisation Supporting Explicit and Composable Mappings (defended on Jan 22, 2017)
 VISO
Dr. Christoph Seidl Integrated Management of Variability in Space and Time in Software Families (defended on Feb 22, 2016). Winner of the SAP price for best industrially oriented PhD thesis 2016. [ bib | pdf ]
 home page at TU Braunschweig
Dr. Jan Reimann
 Generic Quality-Aware Refactoring and Co-Refactoring in Heterogeneous Model Environments, July 2015 [ bib | pdf ] DevBoost
Dr. Sven Karol
 Well-Formed and Scalable Invasive Software Composition PhD thesis. May 2015 [ bib | pdf]
 TU Dresden, compiler chair
Dr. Katja Siegemund Contributions To Ontology-Driven Requirements Engineering. PhD thesis, May 2014. [ bib | pdf ] XING home page
Dr. Andreas Bartho Elucidative Modeling. PhD thesis, May 2014. [ bib | pdf | contents of Phd thesis, published with Vogt Verlag ] DEFT tool page  Linked-In-Homepage
Dr. Julia Schroeter Feature-based Configuration Management for Reconfigurable Cloud Applications. PhD thesis, April 2014. [ pdf on qucosa | bib ] Home page with PUMA tool suite
Dr. Claas Wilke Energy-Aware Development and Labeling for Mobile Applications. PhD thesis, March 2014. [ bib | pdf on qucosa ] Winner of the SAP price for best industrially oriented PhD thesis 2013
 Home page
Dr. Birgit Grammel Automatic Generation of Trace Links in Model-driven Software Development. PhD thesis, February 2014. [ bib | pdf ] Linked-In home page
Dr. Sebastian Götz Multi-Quality Auto-Tuning by Contract Negotiation. PhD thesis, July 2013. [ bib | pdf on qucosa ] Home page
Dr. Christian Wende Language Family Engineering. PhD thesis, March 2012. [ bib | pdf on qucosa ] DevBoost
Dr. Sebastian Richly Autonom rekonfigurierbare Workflows. PhD thesis, December 2011. [ bib | pdf on qucosa ] One of Sebastian's lifetime achievements is the creation and management of the JExam student life-cycle management system of the Fakultät Informatik
Dr. Konrad Voigt Structural Graph-based Metamodel Matching. PhD thesis, November 2011. [ bib | pdf on qucosa ]
Dr. Falk Hartmann Safe Template Processing of XML Documents. PhD thesis, Technische Universität Dresden, Fakultät Informatik, July 2011. [ bib | pdf on qucosa ] Falk was co-founder of Ubigrate and the Java User Group Saxony.
 Falk coorganizes Java User Group Saxony
Linked-In home page
Ubigrate (-2012)
Dr. Mirko Seifert Designing Round-Trip Systems by Model Partitioning and Change Propagation. PhD thesis, Technische Universität Dresden, Fakultät Informatik, June 2011. [ bib | pdf on qucosa ] DevBoost
Dr. Jendrik Johannes Component-Based Model-Driven Software Development. PhD thesis, Technische Universität Dresden, Fakultät Informatik, December 2010. [ bib | pdf on qucosa ] Reuseware tool page
Jendriks homepage
Dr. Ilie Savga A Refactoring-Based Approach to Support Binary Backward-Compatible Framework Upgrades. PhD thesis, April 2010. [ bib | pdf on qucosa ] Ilie has a second
education as doctor
for osteopathy
Linked-In home page
Dr. Simone Röttger Systematische Prozessunterstützung für die Entwicklung laufzeitkritischer Softwaresysteme - PROKRIS-Methodik und -Framework. PhD thesis,  2009. [ bib | pdf on qucosa ] XING Profile
Dr. Henrik Lochmann HybridMDSD: Multi-Domain Engineering with Model-Driven Software Development using Ontological Foundations. PhD thesis,  2009. [ bib | pdf on qucosa ] now CEO of MentalMotive
Dr. Jakob Henriksson A Lightweight Framework for Universal Fragment Composition. PhD thesis, 2008 [ bib | pdf on qucosa ] Linked-In home page
Lic. Robert Kaminski Towards a Framework for XML Refactoring, February 2006. Licentiate Thesis at Linköpings Universitet. [ bib ] Linked-In home page
Lic. Marcus Comstedt Towards a Link-Time Weaving of Binary Components, December 2003. Licentiate Thesis at Linköpings Universitet. [ bib ] Home page at Lysator
Lic. Thomas Panas Towards a Unified Reengineering Process, November 2003. Licentiate Thesis at Växjö Universitet. [ bib ] Linked-In home page
Lic. Jens Gustavsson Towards Updating Runtime Components, June 2003. Licentiate Thesis at Linköpings Universitet. [ bib ] Linked-In home page

 

Technology Demonstrators of my Group

Open Source Software and Fremium Software

  • JouleUnit testing framework (Dr. C. Wilke). For this framework, we offer energy-testing services to companies.
  • EMFText, the versatile syntax mapper to EMF models, readily usable for new domain-specific languages, now supported by company
    • JaMOPP: A Java parser and pretty-printer to Ecore, for extending Java with DSL, refactoring, or other applications
  • LanGems, a role-based language composition laboratory (C. Wende)
  • DEFT, the development environment for tutorials in elucidative programming and modeling (A. Bartho)
  • OSPP, the open service process plattform (Sebastian Richly), won the international IEEE service computing contest in 2008. OSPP is a platform for adaptive (semi-ad-hoc) workflows on the web. It offers a base level workflow with many variants, and a meta-level, which can switch base level workflow variants. Several techniques for switching can be used. 
  • The feature mapper, a bridge between feature trees and UML artefacts (F. Heidenreich). Now commercialized at DevBoost
  • Refactoring toolbox RECODER (A. Ludwig et. al., since 1998, still maintained in Karlsruhe)

Guests

Conferences and Workshop Commitees

PC Membership

I have been member of the following commitees of scientific conferences: 

Founding Member of Workshops and Conferences

Steering Committees

I am or have been member of the following Steering Committees:
I am member of the IFIP Working Group 2.4 "System Implementation Techniques". This international group meets regularly to exchange new research results.

Organisation of Industry Days and Seminars

Reviewing

I have been reviewer of the following projects or clusters:

  • DFG Fachkollegiat Softwaretechnik (since 2016)
  • DFG reviewer for "Normalverfahren" and "Sonderforschungsbereich"
  • ERC reviewer for "Advanced Grants"
  • EU 6th framework: Integrated project SPEEDS
  • EU 7th framework: Integrated project COMPASS
  • ELITE excellence cluster, Sweden
  • Embedded Systems Week, EU
  • German-Israel-Foundation (GIF)
  • Swedish Vetenskapsradet
  • Swedish KK-Stiftelsen

Industrial Consultancy

Consulting projects fascinating me usually require a mix of some of these topics:
  • Sept 17, 2015: "Energiespeichertag" of GWT and network CSSI with talk on "Energy-Efficient Apps"
  • June 2014, Sept. 2015: User conference of AIS Automation Systems Dresden
  • Growth problems of software companies: organizational, business models, growth models
  • Software Engineering: requirements, risk management, specification, architecture, design, object-orientation, aspect orientation
  • Component technology and composition technology
  • Framework technology (whitebox, blackbox, layered frameworks)
  • Design patterns
  • Software architecture: distributed systems, frameworks and architectures
  • XML, OWL, Semantic Web
  • Compilers: How to build compilers, compiler tools 
  • Program analysis and optimization

Teaching

My group organizes the following courses:

Bachelor Level

Master Level

On the master level, our courses are research-oriented, i.e., students are expected to read research papers independently.

For the rest, please consult the teaching page of the ST group.

Miscellaneous

Nice People in Computer Science

Humor (Funny Incidents in Computer Science)

Visit my Partners and Collaborators in Computer Science

Success Stories

Transfer Cases of Projects

  • EuroTrackX project (SAB), a technology transfer project with the companies Dresden Informatik, TTE Europe and iSAX (2013-2014). TTE Europe sells now a tracking system for dynamites, configurable for European countries
  • Open4Innovation, an ESF research transfer network, 2010-2013. This network co-started the Working Group "Cyber-Physical Systems" of Silicon Saxony and launched the global OpenInnovation platform WatchOurIdeas
  • BMBF FeasiPLe (Feature modeling in Product Lines) Feature modeling in product lines (2005-2008).This project developed the open-source tool Featuremapper, which was integrated as a component into PureVision's Feature tool
  • EMFText, the EMF open-source environment for domain-specific languages, created many projects and contacts all over the world, also the startup DevBoost
  • B2PDE with ComArch, financed by Sächsische Aufbaubank (SAB) (2005-2007). This project was one of the initial projects of ComArch after starting in Germany. It initiated two PhDs, of Ilie Savga on Adapter generation and of Andreas Bartho on elucidative modeling.
  • The compiler component framework CoSy (home page at ACE), in the EU project COMPARE (1990-95). In this project, several languages, such as fSDL and EDL, the languages of the CoSy framework, were developed as prototypes and marketed by ACE. One offspring of this project in Saarbrücken was the company AbsInt. One offspring of this project was the Company HEI in Mannheim.

Archive

Completed Projects

I have contributed to the development of the following other systems and research projects.

Other National Projects

  • ESF PhD stipend for "SemViz - Semantic Vizualization" (Jan Polowinski)
  • ESF PhD stipend for "Rewrite Systems for Trees with Overlaid Graphs" (Christoph Bürger). This resulted in the RACR context-sensitive term rewriting technology
  • ESF research transfer network Open4Innovation, 2010-2013. This network startet the Arbeitskreis Cyber-physikalische Systeme (CPS) in Silicon Saxony, quite an active working group. It also supported the predecessor of the "Java User Group Saxony", the Innovation forum Software Saxony
  • ZESSY (Zukünftiger Entwurf Eingebetteter Systeme) and its subgroup Qualitune, 2010-2013. This project started to work on NAO walking robots of Aldebaran, quite some inspiration
  • DFG Hyperadapt, applying aspect orientation to multimedia systems, 2009-2011
  • BMBF CoolSoftware, developing a dynamic, energy-efficient software architecture, 2009-2011, a project within the cluster CoolSilicon
  • Open4Business, a BMWi project in the line "Wissenschaft trifft Wirtschaft". A technology transfer project for Saxonian small and medium enterprises, 2009-2010
  • BMBF SuReal (Secure Real-Time Systems), research on real-time modeling with UML, real-time statecharts, real-time aspects (2005-2008). This project was the first project of the chair that worked with robots - Lego Mindstorms robots (films at the review of 2008).
  • Semantic Web for Production (SWEBPROD), a Swedish project (Vinnova)
  • Semantic Descriptions of XML in the XWizard project (a CENIIT project of Linköping University) 
  • The Swedish project RISE (SSF)
  • Second Generation Application Provisioning (2GAP) (Vinnova) 

European Projects

  • EU 7th Framework project MOST (Marrying Ontologies and Software Engineering), 2008-2011
  • EU 6th Framework project MODELPLEX (Model-driven development of complex systems)
  • EU 6th Framework Network of Excellence REWERSE www.rewerse.net
  • EU 4th Framework FET project EASYCOMP 
  • EU 5th Framework project High Integrity Object-Oriented Real-Time Systems (HIDOORS) www.hidoors.org
  • EU 4th Framework project JOSES (Java and CoSy for Embedded Systems)
  • EU 5th Framework project AJACS (Applying Java to Automotive Systems), www.ajacs.org 

Earlier Development Environments and Tools, Out of Maintenance

  • 1998-2003: COMPOST, the software composition system (COMPOST main page).  COMPOST is a library of static meta-programs for the composition of Java fragments.
  • 1992-2003: OPTIMIX, the graph rewrite tool for C and Java
  • 2001-2002: SWEDE, the ontology development environment
  • 2006-2008: Safer Web, the community for a children-safe web
  • 1990-1993: A parallelizer for Modula-2, PRISMA.  This parallelizer contained a heap analysis according to Chase/Wegman/Zadeck 1990, and successfully parallelized loops over lists in Modula-2

Organization

I have been co-organizing several scientific workshops and/or conferences:

Fast Browse

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