Guest Editorial to the Theme Section on Model-Driven Web Engineering

Abstract

Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is becoming a widely accepted paradigm for the design and development of complex distributed applications.MDEadvocates the use ofmodels and model transformations as key artefacts in all phases of the software process, from system specification and analysis, to design, development and testing. Each model usually addresses one concern, independently from the rest of the issues involved in the construction of the system. Thus, the basic functionality of the system can be separated from its final implementation, and the business logic can be separated from the underlying platform technology, etc. Transformations between models enable the automated implementation of a system from the different models defined for it. The Web Engineering (WE) community soon discovered that the key aspects of MDE (abstraction through modeling; separation of concerns by multi-viewpoint specification, and software development by model transformation) perfectly matched the principles and practices promoted by WE, and allowed Web application designers to address some of their