Abstract. Models express not only information about their intended domain but also about the way in which the model is incomplete, or "partial". This partiality supports the modeling process because it permits the expression of what is known without premature decisions about what is still unknown, until later refinements can fill in this information. A key observation of this paper is that a number of partiality types can be defined in a modeling language-independent way, and we propose a formal framework for doing so. In particular, we identify four types of partiality and show how to extend a modeling language to support their expression and refinement. This systematic approach provides a basis for reasoning as well as a framework for generic tooling support. We illustrate the framework by enhancing the UML class diagram and sequence diagram languages with partiality support and using Alloy to automate reasoning tasks.

Software product lines and model transformations are two techniques used in industry for managing the development of highly complex software. Product line approaches simplify the handling of software variants while model transformations automate software manipulations such as refactoring, optimization, code generation, etc. While these techniques are well understood independently, combining them to get the benefit of both poses a challenge because most model transformations apply to individual models while modellevel product lines represent sets of models. In this paper, we address this challenge by providing an approach for automatically "lifting" model transformations so that they can be applied to product lines. We illustrate our approach using a case study and evaluate it through a set of experiments.

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Although Model-Based Software Engineering (MBE) is a widely accepted Software Engineering (SE) discipline, no agreedupon core set of concepts and practices (i.e., a Body of Knowledge) has been defined for it yet. With the goals of characterizing the contents of the MBE discipline, promoting a global consistent view of it, clarifying its scope with regard to other SE disciplines, and defining a foundation for the development of educational curricula on MBE, this paper proposes the contents for a Body of Knowledge for MBE. We also describe the methodology that we have used to come up with the proposed list of contents, as well as the results of a survey study that we conducted to sound out the opinion of the community on the importance of the proposed topics and their level of coverage in the existing SE curricula.

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