Preface to MDSE4AmI 2007

The implementation of AmI applications is a task of tremendous complexity requiring the seamless integration of heterogeneous systems in an open and flexible way while providing the means for adaptivity and context-awareness. Ubiquitous devices have to cooperate to realize smart environments, multimodal user interfaces have to adapt to the available modalities for interaction and context information has to be taken into account. Therefore, new engineering approaches are needed in order to facilitate efficient design, development and deployment of AmI applications. Model driven approaches may be able to contribute to a solution by providing the means to build specific applications in a (semi-)automatic way from abstract models using well-defined transformations. The workshop on Model Driven Software Engineering for Ambient Intelligence Applications, held on on November 7, 2007, in the context of the European Conference on Ambient Intelligence in Darmstadt, supported this assumption. The workshop presented a stimulating mixture of talks ranging from basic research to industrial applications. Looking at the nine papers presented at the workshop one can identify certain trends: