XMLText: From XML Schema to Xtext

A multitude of Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) have been implemented with XML Schemas. While such DSLs are well adopted and flexible, they miss modern DSL editor functionality. Moreover, since XML is primarily designed as a machine-processible format, artifacts defined with XMLbased DSLs lack comprehensibility and, therefore, maintainability. In order to tackle these shortcomings, we propose a bridge between the XML Schema Definition (XSD) language and text-based metamodeling languages. This bridge exploits existing seams between the technical spaces XMLware, modelware, and grammarware as well as closes identified gaps. The resulting approach is able to generate Xtextbased editors from XSDs providing powerful editor functionality, customization options for the textual concrete syntax style, and round-trip transformations enabling the exchange of data between the involved technical spaces. We evaluate our approach by a case study on TOSCA, which is an XML-based standard for defining Cloud deployments. The results show that our approach enables bridging XMLware with modelware and grammarware in several ways going beyond existing approaches and allows the automated generation of editors that are at least equivalent to editors manually built for XML-based languages.European Commission ICT Policy Support Programme 31785

Extracting Models from Source Code in Software Modernization

International audienceModel-driven software modernization is a discipline in which model-driven development (MDD) techniques are used in the modernization of legacy systems. When existing software artifacts are evolved, they must be transformed into models to apply MDD techniques such as model transformations. Since most modernization scenarios (e.g., application migration) involve dealing with code in general-purpose programming languages (GPL), the extraction of models from GPL code is an essential task in a model-based modernization process. This activity could be performed by tools to bridge grammarware and MDD technical spaces, which is normally carried out by dedicated parsers. Grammar-to-Model Transformation Language (Gra2MoL) is a domain-specific language (DSL) tailored to the extraction of models from GPL code. This DSL is actually a text-to-model transformation language which can be applied to any code conforming to a grammar. Gra2MoL aims to reduce the effort needed to implement grammarware-MDD bridges, since building dedicated parsers is a complex and time-consuming task. Like ATL and RubyTL languages, Gra2MoL incorporates the binding concept needed to write mappings between grammar elements and metamodel elements in a simple declarative style. The language also provides a powerful query language which eases the retrieval of scattered information in syntax trees. Moreover, it incorporates extensibility and grammar reuse mechanisms. This paper describes Gra2MoL in detail and includes a case study based on the application of the language in the extraction of models from Delphi code

Auto-tooling to Bridge the Concrete and Abstract Syntax of Complex Textual Modeling Languages

This thesis contributes to improving support for complex textual modeling languages. This support refers to the automatic generation of tools for the end user -- e.g. parsers, editors, views, etc. -- and (parts of) the standard specifications defined to describe the languages -- e.g. the Object Management Group open specifications for varied modeling languages. The particular subset of languages considered in the thesis are textual, model-based and complex. They are considered textual when their concrete syntax is textual, in particular, defined by a grammar. They are considered model-based when their abstract syntax is defined by a meta-model. They are considered complex when there is a significant gap between the concrete and abstract syntax of the language; in other words, when the abstract syntax meta-model cannot directly be derived or inferred from the concrete syntax grammar. The contributions of this thesis address the problem of bridging the concrete and abstract syntax of complex textual modeling languages. In particular, the contributions include (a) a gap analysis of the limitations of related work; (b) a domain-specific transformation language for defining and executing concrete syntax to abstract syntax bridges; (c) an experimental evaluation of the proposed solution including studies to compare with related work. Existing related work presents different issues when working on complex textual modeling languages. Either sufficient automatic tooling generation is not provided (Gra2Mol), or model-based languages are not appropriately supported (Spoofax), or complex gaps between the concrete and abstract syntax cannot be bridged (Xtext). This thesis identifies the different concerns that arise when bridging the concrete and abstract syntax of complex textual modeling languages. In addition, some limitations of relevant related work are shown. With the aim of addressing these identified concerns a new approach is proposed, showing how these concerns are particularly addressed. Specifically, the proposed approach consists of complementing relevant related work (Xtext) with a novel domain-specific transformation language to declare bridges between the concrete syntax and abstract syntax of complex textual modeling languages. The domain-specific transformation language is the main contribution of this thesis and is evaluated by means of qualitative and quantitative studies. Subject to the presented examples, the conducted experiments show that the proposed approach brings measurable benefits -- in terms of size of specification artefacts and execution time of the underlying implementation -- when compared to the state-of-the-art

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

Software development environments and tools in MDE

Abstract. Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is the notion that we can construct a model of a system that we can then transform into the real thing. The development of software in MDE using Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) has two phases. First, the development of artifacts such as DSLs and  transformation mechanisms by the modeling experts. Second, people non-technical experts (domain expert or end user) using the artifacts created develop applications simply because of the high level of abstraction allowed by technology. Several factors are considered to limit the use of MDE. One of them,  is the lack of knowledge the tools and the development activities with MDE. To support the MDE initiative, the present work makes a description of the theoretical foundations of MDE, also describes the main activities to build several MDE artifacts with some of the tools most known in this technology

Hacia la definición de lenguajes específicos de dominio con sintaxis gráfica y textual

Also published online by CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org, ISSN 1613-0073) En este artículo describimos nuestro enfoque para la asignación de sintaxis concreta tanto gráfica como textual a Lenguajes Específicos de Dominio (LEDs). Nuestra aproximación consiste en definir un meta-modelo que describe la sintaxis abstracta del LED, a cuyos elementos se puede asignar una visualización gráfica. Para asignarles una sintaxis textual se ha construido un meta-modelo con conceptos relevantes para la descripción de programas textuales (por ejemplo, operador, expresión, secuencia, etc). Se han definido una serie de transformaciones que, a partir del meta-modelo de la sintaxis abstracta del LED, generan un modelo conforme al meta-modelo para la sintaxis textual, que el diseñador del LED puede posteriormente refinar. A partir de este modelo, es posible generar un parser que crea instancias válidas del meta-modelo del LED a partir de programas textuales conformes a la gramática.Este trabajo ha sido subvencionado en parte por el Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, proyecto MOSAIC (TSI2005-08225-C07-06), y por la Consejería de Educación de la Comunidad de Madrid y el Fondo Social Europeo (F.S.E.), mediante una beca FP

Harvesting models from web 2.0 databases

International audienceData rather than functionality are the sources of competitive advantage for Web2.0 applications such as wikis, blogs and social networking websites. This valuable information might need to be capitalized by third-party applications or be subject to migration or data analysis. Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) can be used for these purposes. However, MDE first requires obtaining models from the wiki/blog/website database (a.k.a. model harvesting). This can be achieved through SQL scripts embedded in a program. However, this approach leads to laborious code that exposes the iterations and table joins that serve to build the model. By contrast, a Domain-Specific Language (DSL) can hide these "how" concerns, leaving the designer to focus on the "what", i.e. the mapping of database schemas to model classes. This paper introduces Schemol, a DSL tailored for extracting models out of databases which considers Web2.0 specifics. Web2.0 applications are often built on top of general frameworks (a.k.a. engines) that set the database schema (e.g.,MediaWiki, Blojsom). Hence, table names offer little help in automating the extraction process. In addition, Web2.0 data tend to be annotated. User-provided data (e.g., wiki articles, blog entries) might contain semantic markups which provide helpful hints for model extraction. Unfortunately, these data end up being stored as opaque strings. Therefore, there exists a considerable conceptual gap between the source database and the target metamodel. Schemol offers extractive functions and view-like mechanisms to confront these issues. Examples using Blojsom as the blog engine are available for download

Reusable textual styles for domain-specific modeling languages

Domain-specific languages enable concise and precise formalization of domain concepts and promote direct employment by domain experts. Therefore, syntactic constructs are introduced to empower users to associate concepts and relationships with visual textual symbols. Model-based language engineering facilitates the description of concepts and relationships in an abstract manner. However, concrete representations are commonly attached to abstract domain representations, such as annotations in metamodels, or directly encoded into language grammar and thus introduce redundancy between metamodel elements and grammar elements. In this work we propose an approach that enables autonomous development and maintenance of domain concepts and textual language notations in a distinctive and metamodel-agnostic manner by employing style models containing grammar rule templates and injection-based property selection. We provide an implementation and showcase the proposed notationspecification language in a comparison with state of the art practices during the creation of notations for an executable domain-specific modeling language based on the Eclipse Modeling Framework and Xtext