Elsevier special issue on foundations and applications of model driven architecture

Model Driven Architecture (MDA) is an approach for software development proposed by Object Management Group (OMG). The basic principle of MDA is the separation of the specification of system functionality from the specification of the implementation of that functionality on a specific platform. The goal of the approach is to produce software assets that are more resilient to changes caused by the emerging technologies. MDA makes the role of modeling and models in the current software development much more important. It builds upon the existing OMG standards such as UML and UML profiles, MOF, CWM, and OCL. In addition, the MDA approach puts forward the need for additional technologies that support the realization of this vision for software development. As a result we have witnessed the emergence of several new OMG standards related to model-to-model transformations (the QVT transformation language), model-to-text transformations (MOF Model-to-Text transformation language), Architecture-Driven Modernization (ADM), and others. The MDA initiative covers a wide spectrum of research areas, some of them already well established and some are newly emerged. Further efforts are required to bring them into a coherent approach based on open standards and supported by matured tools and techniques