The Past, Present, and Future of Automation in Model-Driven Engineering

Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) provides a huge body of knowledge of automation for many different engineering tasks, especially those involving transitioning from design to implementation. With the huge progress made on Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, questions arise for the future of MDE such as how existing MDE techniques and technologies can be improved or how other activities which currently lack dedicated support can also be automated. However, at the same time, it has to be revisited where and how models should be used to keep the engineers in the loop for creating, operating, and maintaining complex systems. To trigger dedicated research on these open points, we discuss the history of automation in MDE and present perspectives on how automation in MDE can be further improved and which obstacles have to be overcome in the medium and long term perspective.