SyncMeta: Near Real-time Collaborative Conceptual Modeling on the Web

Lehrstuhl Informatik 5
(Information Systems)
Prof. Dr. M. Jarke
1 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Near Real-Time Collaborative
Conceptual Modeling on the Web
Michael Derntl, Petru Nicolaescu, Stephan Erdtmann
Ralf Klamma, Matthias Jarke
RWTH Aachen University
Lehrstuhl Informatik 5 – Information Systems
lastname@dbis.rwth-aachen.de
ER 2015 | 21 Oct 2015
This work has been funded with support from the European Commission. This presentation reflects
the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which
may be made of the information contained therein.

Prof. Dr. M. Jarke
2
Motivation
 Conceptual modeling
– Key activity in many areas
– Social, creative process [FK98] – collaborative work [RKV08]
 Typical collaboration: asynchronous
 Availability of near real-time (NRT)
collaborative modeling tools
– On desktop and on the Web
– From highly domain-specific tools like Kanban Tool1…
– … to very generic ones like draw.io2
1 http://kanbantool.com
2 http://www.draw.io

Prof. Dr. M. Jarke
3
Near Real-Time Collaborative Editing
 Synchronous editing independent of the location of the
users
– Propagation of user actions to collaborators
– Responsiveness similar to single-user applications
– Consistency maintenance
 Inconsistencies caused by divergence or causality-
violation [SE98]
 Two approaches for consistency preservation
– Conflict prevention [XZS00]
– Conflict resolution [SE98]
 Architectures
– Centralized architecture (client/server)
– Decentralized architecture (peer-to-peer)

Prof. Dr. M. Jarke
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Objectives
Functional
• Framework for NRT
collaborative modelling
(domain-independent)
• Meta model based
• Visual modeling
• Awareness
• Structure editing support
Non-Functional
• Open source code
• Building on open
protocols
• Runs in Web browsers
Research the shift towards Web-based collaborative modeling

Prof. Dr. M. Jarke
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Related Tools & Frameworks
Platform Domain-
Indepen-
dent
Meta-
Modeling
NRT
Collab
oration
Awareness Web-
based
Open
Source
MetaEdit+ [TPK07] Smalltalk ✓ ✓ (✓)
ADOxx [FK13] Gecko/C++ ✓ ✓
DiaMeta [Mi07] Java / EMF ✓ ✓ ✓
Gallardo et al.
[GBR12]
Java / EMF ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Tiger [Eh05] Java / EMF ✓ ✓
AToM3 [LVA04] Python ✓ ✓ ✓
GenGED [BEW04] Java ✓ ✓
TWICE [SLHi14] Java/JS/
GWT
✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
SyncMeta JS/ ROLE SDK ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Prof. Dr. M. Jarke
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Meta-Modeling Hierarchy

Prof. Dr. M. Jarke
7
 Real-time collaboration on both modeling layers
Meta-Modeling Framework:
Modeling Process & User Roles

Prof. Dr. M. Jarke
8
Example Languages
 Petri Net
 i*
 IMS LD
 …

Prof. Dr. M. Jarke
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Prof. Dr. M. Jarke
10
Metamodel (partial)

Prof. Dr. M. Jarke
11
 Model Editor is special instance of Meta-Model Editor
 Uses special Export Widget for Model Editor Generation
GUI Architecture

Prof. Dr. M. Jarke
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Technical Realization
 Communication protocol: XMPP
– Suitable protocol for NRT communication
– Multiple extensions available (publish subscribe, multi-user chat)
– Client and server support
 Open source ROLE SDK based on Apache Shindig
– User management
– Personal and collaborative widget space management
– XMPP based multi-user chat
 Inter-widget communication (IWC) [GVD+11]
– Local IWC based on HTML5 Web Messaging API
– Remote IWC based on XMPP Publish Subscribe XEP
– Strophe.js (XMPP over BOSH and WebSockets)
 Conflict Resolution
– Opencoweb OT Javascript framework

Prof. Dr. M. Jarke
13
Model Editor - Functionality
 Near real-time synchronization
 Awareness
- Activity Pane
- Highlighting of nodes
 User interaction to add nodes / edges
- Palette
- Context menu
 Export of Model as JSON, PNG File
- Custom export widgets

Prof. Dr. M. Jarke
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End-User Evaluation
 Goal
- Evaluation of usability and usefulness of Model Editor
- Obtain feedback for improvement
 Methodology
- Editor instance for i* modeling language [Yu95]
- Evaluation session in groups of two
- Participants could see and talk to each other, but were not
able to see each other‘s screen (Skype-like setting)
- Task: Jointly recreate a given i* model using the editor
- Rating using surveys with seven-point Likert scale items

Prof. Dr. M. Jarke
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End-User Evaluation (cont.)
 Participants
- Ten group sessions with 20 participants in total
- Diverse expertise of conceptual modeling and the i*
modeling language (novices as well as experts)
- Regular to frequent usage of graphical editors

Prof. Dr. M. Jarke
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Evaluation:
Quantitative Results
 Overall
– Very positive overall rating (M = 5.7; SD = 1.2)
– User interface and usability also good (M = 5.9 and 5.7,
respectively)
– Ratings independent of user experience (r = .32; p = .17)
 User interaction
– For adding nodes resp. edges participants prefer the context
menu (M = 5.9 and 5.7, resp.) over palette (M = 5.3 each)
 Awareness
– Node highlighting (M = 5.7; SD = 1.2) slightly higher than
activity pane (M = 5.5; SD = 1.4)

Prof. Dr. M. Jarke
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Evaluation:
Suggested Improvements
 Increase overview for large models
 Highlighting of remote changes
 Keyboard shortcuts
 Multiselection of nodes
 Automatic node arrangement
 Drag & drop from palette

Prof. Dr. M. Jarke
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Conclusion and Future Work
 Key points
- Browser-based Meta-Modeling Framework
- Generation of RTC Editors for Visual Modeling Languages
 Different types of user interaction
 Awareness
- Pilot case: i* editor; generally positive evaluation
 Future work
- Views for NRT modeling
- Recommendations during modeling
- Improvement of collaboration using the Yjs OSS library

Prof. Dr. M. Jarke
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THANK YOU FOR LISTENING
nicolaescu@dbis.rwth-aachen.de
Nicolaescu Petru
SyncMeta Project Description
GitHub: https://github.com/rwth-acis/syncmeta

Prof. Dr. M. Jarke
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References
[BEW04] Bardohl, R.; Ermel, C.; Weinhold, I: GenGED–a visual definition tool for visual modeling environments. In Pfaltz, J. L.; Nagl, M.;
Böhlen, B. (Hrsg.): Applications of Graph Transformations with Industrial Relevance. Springer, Berlin, 2004; p. 413–419.
[Eh05] Ehrig, K. et al.: Generation of visual editors as eclipse plug-ins. In: Proc. 20th IEEE/ACM Int. Conf. on Automated Software
Engineering. ACM, New York, 2005; p. 134–143.
[FK98] Floyd, C.; Klischewski, R.: Modellierung - ein Handgriff zur Wirklichkeit. Zur sozialen Konstruktion und Wirksamkeit von Informatik-
Modellen. In: Pohl, K.; Schürr, A.; Vossen, G. (Hrsg.): Modellierung '98. CEUR-WS.org, 1998.
[FK13] Fill, H.-G.; Karagiannis, D.: On the conceptualisation of modelling methods using the ADOxx meta modelling platform. In: Enterprise
Modelling and Information Systems Architectures, 8(1), 2013.
[GBR12] Gallardo, J.; Bravo, C.; Redondo, M. A.: A model-driven development method for collaborative modeling tools. Journal of Network
and Computer Applications, 35(3), 2012; p. 1086–1105.
[GVD+11] Govaerts, S.; Verbert, K.; Dahrendorf, D.; Ullrich, C.; Schmidt, M.; Werkle, M.; Chatterjee, A.; Nussbaumer, A.; Renzel, D.;
Scheffel, M.; Friedrich, M.; Santos, J. L.; Duval, E.; Law, E.: Towards Responsive Open Learning Environments: The ROLE Interoperability
Framework. In: Proc. EC-TEL 2011. Springer, Berlin, 2011; S. 125-138.
[LVA04] de Lara, J.; Vangheluwe, H.; Alfonseca, M.: Meta-modelling and graph grammars for multi-paradigm modelling in AToM³. Software
and Systems Modeling, 3(3), 2004; p. 194–209.
[Mi07] Minas, M.: Generating meta-model-based freehand editors. Electronic Communi-cations of the EASST, 1, 2007.
[SLHi14] Schmid, O., Lisowska Masson, A., Hirsbrunner, B.: Real-time collaboration through web applications: an introduction to the Toolkit
for Web-based Interactive Collaborative Environments (TWICE). Personal and Ubiquitous Computing
18(5) (2014) 1201{1211[Ol07] Olivé, A.: Conceptual modeling of information systems. Springer, 2007.
[RKV08] Renger, M.; Kolfschoten, G. L.; de Vreede, G.-J.: Challenges in Collaborative Modeling: A Literature Review. Lecture Notes in
Business Information Processing, Volume 10, 2008; p. 61-77.
[SE98] Sun, C.; Ellis, C.: Operational transformation in real-time group editors: issues, algorithms, and achievements. In: Proc. 1998 ACM
Conf. on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. ACM, New York, 1998; p. 59–68.
[TPK07] Tolvanen, J.-P.; Pohjonen, R.; Kelly, S.: Advanced tooling for domain-specific modeling: Metaedit+. In: Sprinkle, J.; Gray, J.; Rossi,
M.; Tolvanen, J.-P. (Hrsg.): 7th OOPSLA Workshop on Domain-Specific Modeling, Finland, 2007.
[XZS00] Xue, L.; Zhang, K.; Sun, C.: Conflict control locking in distributed cooperative graphics editors. In: Proc. 1st Int. Conf. on Web
Information Systems Engineering. IEEE, Los Alamitos, 2000; p. 401–408.

SyncMeta: Near Real-time Collaborative Conceptual Modeling on the Web

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