Report for “Habilitation a Diriger des Researches” Award Applicant: Dr. Slimane Hammoudi Reviewer: Professor A. Taleb-Bendiab
The basis of my support relates to the applicant’s outstanding record of achievement in all key areas relevant to the “Habilitation a Diriger des Researches” award, including:
Developing and conducting internationally-leading research in MDE,
Attaining a high-level of achievement in relation to research leadership, and research students’ training,
Developing a track record in attracting and sustaining world-class research collaboration.
Below I detail some of the salient aspects of his achievements.
Research Activities and Impact Dr. Hammoudi’s application demonstrated his outstanding aptitude for conducting world-class research, planning and vision, which is for instance exemplified by his realisation – since his early days as a doctoral researcher -- of the shortcomings of then contemporary object-oriented software engineering methods. Many of which suffered from the lack of semantics richness of software design models and the tight coupling between software models and its implementation (source code) generated for a specific platform. This aspect formed his initial interest in modeldriven development, which found a good match for his research strength in object-oriented data modelling. The applicant’s document is structured into three main parts, which starts by an introductory part outlining his research journey and the seed ideas that formed his research direction. This is followed by a description of MDE approaches and review of the international effort. This section helped contextualise and position the applicant’s research approach and contribution to the body of knowledge in MDE. Then Chapter 4, articulates the applicant’s three key contributions to knowledge in MDE, namely the extensions of his MDE tools and techniques to support:
Software architectural styles (web service and ubiquitous systems),
Aspect-oriented modelling (context-aware and adaptation),
Raising the MDE abstraction level to start from business process modelling level (see BPMN and BPEL).
Professor A. Taleb-Bendiab :: Professor in Computing :: School Head of Research :: Chair of Faculty Research Committee School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences, James Parsons Building, Byrom Street, Liverpool L3 3AF Tel: +44 (0)151-231-2489 Email:
[email protected] Fax: +44 (0)151-207-4594 Web: http://www.cms.livjm.ac.uk
These extensions are now widely accepted and support in many software integrated development environments. The final section of the application outlines the applicant’s future research priorities. In particular, he intends to continue work along the MDE direction focusing on extending and integrating his MDE tools and techniques for:
Modelling and metamodelling,
Model transformation and matching,
MDE development methodologies.
In addition, he has also indicated - in my opinion -- an interesting research goal, which aims to extend his work on semi-automated MDE techniques to support compositional systems. This has recently been identified by the research community as an area for further work, for instance, to open up MDE techniques and models to support:
Runtime autonomic adaptation – see Model as a Service initiative to underpin the Internet of Services and Cloud Computing vision,
Agile software composition following the process, service and component architecture vision.
I am sure that this direction amongst others will open up many opportunities for Dr. Hammoudi’s research team.
Brief Bibliometric Analysis The applicant’s work is driven by modern needs in complex software domain to reducing the tight coupling between a given software models and its corresponding often platform specific implementation (source code). As is well described in the application, this method relies on some key building blocks, namely: (i) model query, transformation and synchronisation to support such a generative system’s development approach. In line with these building blocks, he defined in each chapter his key contributions to the body of knowledge in MDE, and provided a list of his key publications to support his claims. Summary Results Searched Google Scholar with no narrowing Google Scholar has found 210 citations of 17 cited references for Slimane hammoudi. H Index = 9 (What's this?) Detail, sorted by Count Year Title
Cited Index
2004 Applying MDA approach for web service platform
77 11.85
2005 Generating transformation definition from mapping specification: Application to web service platform
20
2006 Mapping specification in MDA: From theory to practice
20
4.44
2004 Applying MDA approach to B2B applications: A road map
14
2.15
3.64
2006 Schema matching in the context of model driven engineering: From theory to practice
11
2.44
2006 Metamodel matching: Experiments and comparison
10
2.22
2008 Model driven development of context-aware service oriented architecture
9
3.60
2008 Context-aware Model Driven Development by Parameterized Transformation
7
2.80
2008 Towards context independence in distributed context-aware applications by the model driven approach
4
1.60
2009 COMODE: A Framework for the Development of Context-Aware Applications in the Context of MDE
2
1.33
2005 Approche MDA pour le développement d'applications internet sur des plates-formes services web: Modélisation, transformation et prototypage – MDA approach for the …
1
0.18
Figure 1: Citation analysis based on Google Scholar data. Based on my review of the enclosed papers in Appendix B, and my own brief analysis of the applicant’s publication and citation profile (details given below); there is a clear evidence to support the applicant’s (i) methodological and research rigour, (ii) his novel results, (iii) and the academic impact of his results. For instance, based on “Google Scholar” data, he has published well over 120 publications since 1991, with an average H-Index of 9. The citation numbers of one of his key publications reached 77 (from 2004 till present). This paper entitled “Applying
MDA approach for web service platform” describes the results of one of his main contributions to knowledge in MDE. In addition, to the quality metrics of his work, he is widely published researcher with on average 5 publications per annum. He has a range of peer esteem factors including:
Best conference papers (02).
International conferences and workshops organisation (08),
Conference chair and/or session chair (04)
Editorship of books and conference proceedings (11).
In terms of postgraduate and research students’ training, he has a growing track record of doctoral research students’ supervision. Since 2003, he has supervised (04) PhD students including two completions. His research topic attracts many postgraduate students, for instance he has supervised (10) MSc project students so far. Since completing his PhD in 1993, he has always maintained active international and national research collaborations with partners from around the world including: Brazil, Portugal, Australia, to name but a few.
Teaching and administrative Duties In addition to all his active research efforts, he has an equally ambitious teaching and administrative schedule.
Concluding Remarks In my opinion, Dr. Hammoudi’s performance so far is remarkable; as he has managed to establish his internationally-leading research activity in addition to sustaining his ambitious teaching and administrative plans. I am sure that given the right research conditions and opportunities he will further demonstrate his strategic research development, leadership and management skills. Hence, I wholeheartedly support and recommend his application to the “Habilitation a Diriger des Researches” award Committee.
Professor A. Taleb-Bendiab
