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An introduction is presented in which the authors discuss editorial board changes and various reports within the issue on topics including cognitive effectiveness of visual notation web modeling language (WebML), graphical model editors, and conflict resolution in goal-oriented models.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including 2014 Editorial Board meeting of the periodical; demise of editor Robert France; and information related to the periodical editions.

An obituary for professor Robert B. France is presented.

Designing secure systems is a nontrivial task. Incomplete or faulty designs can cause security mechanisms to be incorrectly incorporated in a system, allowing them to be bypassed and resulting in a security breach. We advocate the use of the Aspect-Oriented Risk-Driven Development (AORDD) methodology for developing secure systems. This methodology begins with designers defining system assets, identifying potential attacks against them, and evaluating system risks. When a risk is unacceptable, designers must mitigate the associated threat by incorporating security mechanisms methodically into the system design. Designers next formally evaluate the resulting design to ensure that the threat has been mitigated, while still allowing development to meet other project constraints. In this paper, we focus on the AORDD analysis, which consists of: 1) a formal security evaluation and 2) a trade-off analysis that enables system designers to position alternative security solutions against each other. The formal security evaluation uses the Alloy Analyzer to provide assurance that an incorporated security mechanism performs as expected and makes the system resilient to previously identified attacks. The trade-off analysis uses a Bayesian Belief Network topology to allow equally effective security mechanisms to be compared against system security requirements and other factors such as time-to-market and budget constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editors report on the 2013 state of the journal "Software System Model" including the growing rate of paper submissions, the impact factor in publication of articles, and the list of reviewers for the journal.

The author reflects on the 2012 report regarding the journal "Software & Systems Modeling." The author says that in 2012 the journal experiences a continued increase in submissions, wherein it has 308 new manuscripts with 49% on regular issues, and 51% on theme sections. The author states that due to the increase of submissions, the publication of the journal will increase its pipeline. Moreover, the author presents the journal reviewers for 2012.

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including model-based interoperability, dynamic software architectures and software-based system modeling.

The author reflects on a high number of submissions experienced by the journal in which 69% were submitted for regular issues while 31% is for special theme sections of the industry. The author cites the three associate Editors-in- Chief including Martin Gogolla, Jean- Marc Jezequel, and Marsha Chechik to better manage the screening of the high number of submissions. An overview of the increased publication pipeline due to the increasing submissions in the previous years is offered.

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by James Walsh, Francis Bordeleau, and Bran Selic on the framework to model reconfiguration changes in dynamic systems and another by Jim Steel and Jean-Marc Jezequel on the problem of typing in new languages.

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is the de facto language used in the industry for software specifications. Once an application has been specified, Model Driven Architecture (MDA) techniques can be applied to generate code from such specifications. Since implementing a system based on a faulty design requires additional cost and effort, it is important to analyse the UML models at earlier stages of the software development lifecycle. This paper focuses on utilizing MDA techniques to deal with the analysis of UML models and identify design faults within a specification. Specifically, we show how UML models can be automatically transformed into Alloy which, in turn, can be automatically analysed by the Alloy Analyzer. The proposed approach relies on MDA techniques to transform UML models to Alloy. This paper reports on the challenges of the model transformation from UML class diagrams and OCL to Alloy. Those issues are caused by fundamental differences in the design philosophy of UML and Alloy. To facilitate better the representation of Alloy concepts in the UML, the paper draws on the lessons learnt and presents a UML profile for Alloy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editors discuss various articles within the issue including one by huy Tran, Uwe Adun, and Schahram Dustdar on the use of view-based and model-driven techniques, one by Yunja Choi and Christian Bunse on design verification approach for embedded system, and one by Marsha Chechik, Mathiue Sassolas, and Sebastian Uchitel on inconsistencies in behavioral models of a single system.

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses the papers by Wil M. P. Aalst and colleagues regarding the two-step process of creating process models with the use of event logs and by Vahid Garousi on the metrics for behavioral dependency.