Abstraction is the most basic principle of software engineering. Abstractions are provided by models. Modeling and model transformation constitute the core of model-driven development. Models can be refined and finally be transformed into a technical implementation, i.e., a software system.

The aim of this book is to give an overview of the state of the art in model-driven software development. Achievements are considered from a conceptual point of view in the first part, while the second part describes technical advances and infrastructures. Finally, the third part summarizes experiences gained in actual projects employing model-driven development.

Beydeda, Book and Gruhn put together the results from leading researchers in this area, both from industry and academia. The result is a collection of papers which gives both researchers and graduate students a comprehensive overview of current research issues and industrial forefront practice, as promoted by OMG's MDA initiative.

Sami Beydeda is an IT officer at the Federal Finance Office (Bundesamt füer Finanzen), Germany. His research interests besides model-driven development include software testing and component-based development. He has written his PhD thesis on 'The Self-Testing COTS Components (STECC) Method'. Sami Beydeda is a program committee co-chair of TECOS 2004, TQACBS 2005, program committee member of COMPSAC 2004, SEA 2004, QATWBA 2004, QATWBA 2005, TQACBS 2005.

Matthias Book is a research associate at the Chair of Applied Telematics / e-Business at the University of Leipzig in Germany. He is writing his PhD thesis on dialog flow control in web applications. His research interests include software engineering for distributed applications and especially model-driven design of web applications.

Volker Gruhn is a full professor at the computer science department of the University of Leipzig, Germany. His research interests are component-based development, software processes for distributed systems, architecture of electronic commerce applications and workflow management. He has been chief technical officer of a German software house called LION from 1992 to 1996. In this position he was responsible for a software development department of 150 people. Volker Gruhn was a PC member of major software engineering conferences (ESEC95, ESEC97, ICSE2004) and several software process workshops and conferences. He was program chair of the 6th European Workshop on Software Process Technology and the 8th European Software Engineering Conference. Volker Gruhn has already organized a workshop at ICSE, the Engineering Distributed Objects Workshop during ICSE 99. In 1997 Volker Gruhn co-founded adesso AG, a German software house specialized in component-based software development. adesso AG currently has 170 employees.