Editorial to theme issue on model-driven engineering of component-based software systems

This theme issue aims at providing a forum for disseminating latest trends in the use and combination of model-driven engineering (MDE) and component-based software engineering (CBSE). One of the main aims of MDE is to increase productivity in the development of complex systems, while reducing the time to market. Regarding CBSE, one of the main goals is to deliver and then support the exploitation of reusable “off-the-shelf” software components to be incorporated into larger applications. An effective interplay of MDE and CBSE can bring benefits to both communities: on the one hand, the CBSE community would benefit from implementation and automation capabilities of MDE, and on the other hand, MDE would benefit from the foundational nature of CBSE. In total, we received 23 submissions to this theme issue, and each submission was reviewed by at least three reviewers. Thanks to the high quality of the submissions that we received, we could eventually accept six papers for publication.