Meta-model Pruning

Large and complex meta-models such as those of Uml and its profiles are growing due to modelling and inter-operability needs of numerous\ud stakeholders. The complexity of such meta-models has led to coining\ud of the term meta-muddle. Individual users often exercise only a small\ud view of a meta-muddle for tasks ranging from model creation to construction\ud of model transformations. What is the effective meta-model that represents\ud this view? We present a flexible meta-model pruning algorithm and\ud tool to extract effective meta-models from a meta-muddle. We use\ud the notion of model typing for meta-models to verify that the algorithm\ud generates a super-type of the large meta-model representing the meta-muddle.\ud This implies that all programs written using the effective meta-model\ud will work for the meta-muddle hence preserving backward compatibility.\ud All instances of the effective meta-model are also instances of the\ud meta-muddle. We illustrate how pruning the original Uml metamodel\ud produces different effective meta-models

A review of slicing techniques in software engineering

Program slice is the part of program that may take the program off the path of the desired output at some point of its execution. Such point is known as the slicing criterion. This point is generally identified at a location in a given program coupled with the subset of variables of program. This process in which program slices are computed is called program slicing. Weiser was the person who gave the original definition of program slice in 1979. Since its first definition, many ideas related to the program slice have been formulated along with the numerous numbers of techniques to compute program slice. Meanwhile, distinction between the static slice and dynamic slice was also made. Program slicing is now among the most useful techniques that can fetch the particular elements of a program which are related to a particular computation. Quite a large numbers of variants for the program slicing have been analyzed along with the algorithms to compute the slice. Model based slicing split the large architectures of software into smaller sub models during early stages of SDLC. Software testing is regarded as an activity to evaluate the functionality and features of a system. It verifies whether the system is meeting the requirement or not. A common practice now is to extract the sub models out of the giant models based upon the slicing criteria. Process of model based slicing is utilized to extract the desired lump out of slice diagram. This specific survey focuses on slicing techniques in the fields of numerous programing paradigms like web applications, object oriented, and components based. Owing to the efforts of various researchers, this technique has been extended to numerous other platforms that include debugging of program, program integration and analysis, testing and maintenance of software, reengineering, and reverse engineering. This survey portrays on the role of model based slicing and various techniques that are being taken on to compute the slices

Reverse engineering of model transformations for reusability

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08789-4_14Proceedings of 7th International Conference, ICMT 2014, Held as Part of STAF 2014, York, UK, July 21-22, 2014Reuse techniques are key for the industrial adoption of Model-Driven Engineering (MDE). However, while reusability has been successfully applied to programming languages, its use is scarce in MDE and, in particular, in model transformations. In previous works, we developed an approach that enables the reuse of model transformations for different meta-models. This is achieved by defining reusable components that encapsulate a generic transformation template and expose an interface called concept declaring the structural requirements that any meta-model using the component should fulfil. Binding the concept to one of such meta-models induces an adaptation of the template, which becomes applicable to the meta-model. To facilitate reuse, concepts need to be concise, reflecting only the minimal set of requirements demanded by the transformation. In this paper, we automate the reverse engineering of existing transformations into reusable transformation components. To make a transformation reusable, we use the information obtained from its static analysis to derive a concept that is minimal with respect to the transformation and maximizes its reuse opportunities, and then evolve the transformation accordingly. The paper describes a prototype implementation and an evaluation using transformations from the ATL zoo.This work has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity with project “Go Lite” (TIN2011-24139

Big metamodels are evil

While reuse is typically considered a good practice, it may also lead to keeping irrelevant concerns in derived elements. For instance, new metamodels are usually built upon existing metamodels using additive techniques such as profiling and package merge. With such additive techniques, new metamodels tend to become bigger and bigger, which leads to harmful overheads of complexity for both tool builders and users. In this paper, we introduce ≪ package unmerge≫ - a proposal for a subtractive relation between packages - which complements existing metamodel-extension techniques

Towards maintainer script modernization in FOSS distributions

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) distributions are complex software systems, made of thousands packages that evolve rapidly, independently, and without centralized coordination. During packages upgrades, corner case failures can be encountered and are hard to deal with, especially when they are due to misbehaving maintainer scripts: executable code snippets used to finalize package configuration. In this paper we report a software modernization experience, the process of representing existing legacy systems in terms of models, applied to FOSS distributions. We present a process to define meta-models that enable dealing with upgrade failures and help rolling back from them, taking into account maintainer scripts. The process has been applied to widely used FOSS distributions and we report about such experiences

Localized model transformations for building large-scale transformations

International audienceModel-Driven Engineering (MDE) exploits well-defined, tool-supported modelling languages and operations applied to models created using these languages. Model transformation is a critical part of the use of MDE. It has been argued that transformations must be engineered systematically, particularly when the languages to which they are applied are large and complicated – e.g., UML 2.x and profiles such as MARTE – and when the transformation logic itself is complex. We present an approach to designing large model transformations for large languages, based on the principle of separation of concerns. Specifically, we define a notion of localized transformations that are restricted to apply to a subset of a modelling language; a composition of localized transformations is then used to satisfy particular MDE objectives, such as the design of very large transformations. We illustrate the use of localized transformations in a concrete example applied to large transformations for system-on-chip co-design