Welcome to Uwe Aßmann's Home Page

Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Uwe Aßmann
Professor for Software Engineering
Technische Universität Dresden
Fakultät Informatik (nice brochure) (nice film)
Institut für Software- und Multimediatechnik (SMT)
01062 Dresden
Germany
Uwe Aßmann's
                      Picture
mailto: Uwe.Assmann(AT)tu-dresden.de
http://www1.inf.tu-dresden.de/~ua1
http://st.inf.tu-dresden.de
https://www.facebook.com/stdresden
Phone: +49-351-463-38463 Katrin Heber
[softwaretechnologie[at]tu-dresden.de]
Fax: +49-351-463-38459

Location: Andreas-Pfitzmann-Bau (APB), Nöthnitzer Strasse 46
2nd floor west wing, room 2087
01069 Dresden
Last updated 2024-01-11

Forecast

  • Summer semester, I will teach the courses "Software Engineering", "Future Proof Software Systems", "Academic Skills for Software Engineers (ASISE)".

News

Past News

Publications

[ publications on DBLP | publications on Google scholar | publications on SCOPUS | publications on ORCHID ]

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

Since software engineering is a discipline between theory and practice, we try to balance basic research with technology research and application-driven research.

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, then for KUKA LBR in the T-RoX project, and even more robots:.

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

Software composition integrates the following areas of software engineering: aspect-oriented development, architecture languages, view-based development, and generic programming. The speciality of the Dresden group, 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 | Overview of Orchestration Path of cfAED | Semantics-aware composition for parallelization ]
  • 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.

Agile Business Modeling in Smart Ecosystems (Lean Startup for Software and Innovation Ecosystems)

Agile Teaching

Agile teaching employs the methods of agine software engineering to teaching. Our group maintains the following feedback systems for students:

Self-Adaptive Systems and Their Architectures

Context- and Role-Based Modeling (Context-based Views)

During the last years, we have have learned that Model-Driven Software Engineering should be based on languages with contexts and roles (Context- and Role-based Modeling and Metamodeling). Roles capture context-sensitive object behavior in specific contexts. Role systems automatically adapt to context changes. Contexts and roles can be applied to objects, models, and metamodels (for language engineering). This is an exciting new area of MDSD!

Model-Driven Software Engineering (MDSD) in Technical Spaces

MDSD is cool because it shows complex software in simple views (models).

Megamodels and Model-driven software development (MDSD) 

Software Product Lines

Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) maintains a configuration 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
  • Quality requirement specification for components and their quality-based optimization with Multi-Quality Auto-Tuning (MQuAT) of Dr. Sebastian Götz

Program Analysis and Transformation Techniques

  • 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
  • Relational RAGs: Bidirectional Edges in Reference-attribute grammars (Johannes Mey): SLE paper

Development Environments Tool and Generator Technologies

  • Context-based Petri Nets (Carl Mai, Dr Marvin Triebel)
  • 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)

Other Results

Research Talks

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

Startups of Alumni of the Chair

Several  of my PhD students have founded startups, often with my mentoring under BMBF Exist or Sachsen TGFS grants:

Hall of Fame

Ongoing Research Projects

  • DFG GRK AirMetro "Autonomous Airbound Mobility in Urban Regions"
  • DFG SFB/TRR 339 "Digital Twins of the Road of the Future (STRASSE)"
  • DFG SFB 1618 CONVIDE (as a satellite of KIT)
  • DFG Excellence Cluster Center for Tactile Internet (CeTI), Projects U2 (Industrial use cases, leader), TP5 (fog architectures) 
  • BMBF 6G-life project on robotic applications with 6G (shopping assistant, care assistant)
  • Self-reproducing modular robots (SAMBots) in Boysen Research Training Group "Mobility in Transition", Cluster B (Wanqi Zhao)

  • The 5G Lab Germany is a cluster of chairs targeting "tactile applications" (chair Prof. Fettweis). We take part in the application track.

Past Projects

Postdocs and Alumni in Academics and Industry

Postdoc
Project
Web
Dr. Birgit Demuth
Teaching systems; OCL

Dr. Sebastian Götz
Self-adaptive software architectures

Dr. Karsten Wendt Digital Health, Fog computing
Dr. Marvin Triebel
Modeling cobots with hybrid petri nets

Dr. Ronny Seiger
University of St. Gallen
github
Dr. Thomas Kühn Karlsruhe University RoSI
Prof. Dr. Sven Karol
Hochschule Merseburg
web
Prof. Dr. Christoph Seidl
IT University Copenhagen
web
Dr. Steffen Zschaler
Kings College London, Senior Reader

Christoff Bürger
Dassaut Systems, Lund
github
Dr. Somayeh Malakuti
ABB Ladenburg
ResearchGate


Founders of Companies

Who
Company
When
Christian Piechnick
wandelbots
2017
Maria Piechnick wandelbots 2017
Jan Falkenberg
wandelbots 2017
Sebastian Werner
wandelbots 2017
Dr. Georg Püschel
wandelbots 2017
Christoph Biering
wandelbots 2017, after Master's thesis
Dr, Mirko Seifert
devboost
2012
Dr. Christian Wende
devboost
2012



PhD Students

Current

PhD
Project
Web
Kay Bierzynski
Role-based learning for the Internet of Things
Industry PhD student
Mikhail Belov
Immersive robotics, ADL for robotics
SNIFFBOT
Andreas Domanowski
Innovative Programming-Feedback Systems
AG Feedbacksysteme
Martin Morgenstern
Product Lines in Feedback Systems
AG Feedbacksysteme
Markus Hamann
Model Assessment System MARS
AG Feedbacksysteme
Sebastian Ebert
Model-Driven Virtual Prototyping of Robotic Applications with Hybrid Petri Nets
CeTI
Domink Grzelak
Bigraph-based
Software architectures for fog computing
CeTI
Bigraphs.org
Romina Kühn
Mixed-reality apps

Mandy Korzetz
Mixed-reality interaction patterns




Johannes Mey
Heterogeneous code generation techniques with orchestration style sheets. Extends Reference Attribute grammars for Models-at-runtime and the use in HAEC
[ paper ]
Dymitro Pukhkaiev Quality-Guided Abstraction Refinement and Domain Transformation HAEC
Rene Schöne Data-flow-based RACR in Smart Lighting Applications OpenLicht
Frank Rohde A Dynamic Software Product Line for Pseudonym Systems in Fog Computing ILMA, RoSI
Wanqi Zhao
Robots for Software-Defined Mobile Supply Chains
Boysen-Graduiertenkolleg

Moved to Wandelbots in 2018

Carl Mai Petri-net based code synthesis for Silicon Nanowire structures cfAED Silicon-Nanowire Path
Maria Piechnick Software architectures for Wearable Computing in the Internet of Things SysPlace project, Co-founder Wandelbots
Christian Piechnick Role-based model-driven architectural languages for self-adaptive systems
SMAGS  site, Co-founder Wandelbots
Ronny Kaiser
Collaboration platforms for Lean Innovation
Wandelbots
Sebastian Werner
Fog frameworks for Cobots
Co-founder Wandelbots





Abroad

Christoff Bürger
Remote Attribute Grammar Controlled Rewriting (RACR)
RACR
github

PhD Alumni

List of PhD alumni

PhD
Topic
Scholar
web
bib
pdf
Traces in the web
Dr. Christopher Werner Role-based model synchronization scholar


pdf
Wandelbots
Dr. Ronny Seiger
Self-managed Workflows for Cyber-physical Systems with Scalable Consistency. November 2018.
How to run a workflow system on cyber-physical environments such as Smart Rooms.
scholar
github
pdf Ronny works now at University of St. Gallen
Dr. Georg Püschel Testing Self-Adaptive Systems - A Model-based Approach to Resilience. Juni 2018.
The ultimate robot-testing method.
scholar
github

pdf Co-founder of Wandelbots
Dr. Max Leuthäuser A Pure Embedding of Roles - Exploring 4-dimensional Dispatch for Roles in Structured Contexts. August 2017. Context and Roles in Scala in the library SCROLL. SCROLL will be the basis of the cross-layer architecture of HAEC.
scholar


pdf
RoSI SCROLL HAEC
Dr. Thomas Kühn A Family of Role-Based Languages.
Develops a role-based modeling language for context-aware applications.
scholar


pdf
Projects
Dr. Jan Polowinski
Ontology-Driven, Guided Visualisation Supporting Explicit and Composable Mappings. This PhD thesis developes a technique for visualizing for ontological data. It uses the VISO visualization ontology to define a mapping between the ontological data and a visualization specification.
scholar
Web
pdf VISO
Twitter
Homepage
Startup OpenPhysio
Dr. Christoph Seidl Integrated Management of Variability in Space and Time in Software Families. Winner of the SAP price for best industrially oriented PhD thesis 2016. [ bib  ]
scholar


pdf home page at TU Braunschweig
Dr. Jan Reimann
Generic Quality-Aware Refactoring and Co-Refactoring in Heterogeneous Model Environments, July 2015
scholar

bib pdf Fraunhofer IWU, Chemnitz, Linked-in page
Dr. Sven Karol
Well-Formed and Scalable Invasive Software Composition PhD thesis. May 2015
scholar

bib pdf Linked-In
github
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. [ contents of Phd thesis, published with Vogt Verlag ]

bib pdf DEFT tool page  Linked-In-Homepage
Dr. Julia Schroeter Feature-based Configuration Management for Reconfigurable Cloud Applications. PhD thesis, April 2014.


bib pdf Home page with PUMA tool suite
Dr. Claas Wilke Energy-Aware Development and Labeling for Mobile Applications. PhD thesis, March 2014. [ Winner of the SAP price for best industrially oriented PhD thesis 2013 ]
scholar
web bib pdf
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.
scholar
web bib pdf
Dr. Christian Wende Language Family Engineering. PhD thesis, March 2012.
scholar

bib pdf DevBoost
Dr. Sebastian Richly Autonom rekonfigurierbare Workflows. PhD thesis, December 2011. One of Sebastian's lifetime achievements is the creation and management of the JExam student life-cycle management system of the Fakultät Informatik


bib pdf
Dr. Konrad Voigt Structural Graph-based Metamodel Matching. PhD thesis, November 2011.


bib pdf
Dr. Falk Hartmann Safe Template Processing of XML Documents. PhD thesis, Technische Universität Dresden, Fakultät Informatik, July 2011. [ Falk was co-founder of Ubigrate and the Java User Group Saxony who celebrated 10 years jubilee in 2018.]

bib pdf 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.  Mirko is co-founder of DevBoost.


bib pdf DevBoost
Dr. Jendrik Johannes Component-Based Model-Driven Software Development. PhD thesis, Technische Universität Dresden, Fakultät Informatik, December 2010.


bib pdf 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 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 XING Profile
Dr. Henrik Lochmann HybridMDSD: Multi-Domain Engineering with Model-Driven Software Development using Ontological Foundations. PhD thesis,  2009.


bib pdf now CEO of MentalMotive
Dr. Jakob Henriksson A Lightweight Framework for Universal Fragment Composition. PhD thesis, 2008


bib pdf 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

Labcasts (Videos) on Youtube and Other Portals

Technology Demonstrator Websites

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 of Our Chair

Conferences and Workshop Committees

PhD Committee Membership (Opponent)

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 (fog computing), 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.

Winter semester
Sommer semester
Others
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

  • Wandelbots is a Startup founded in Nov 2017. It got venture capital and is growing fast. It has taken over about 8 persons from my group (!).
  • 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
  • DevBoost is a startup founded in 2012 for Test and Requirments Engineering. They have popularized 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

  • ECSEL project IoSense, 2016-2019 |  IoSense youtube channel
  • 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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