Exploiting Visual Languages Generation and UML Meta Modeling to Construct Meta-CASE Workbenches

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Polyglot software development

The languages we choose to design solutions influence the way we think about the problem, the words we use in discussing it with colleagues, the processes we adopt in developing the software which should solve that problem. Therefore we should strive to use the best language possible for depicting each facet of the system. To do that we have to solve two challenges: i) first of all to understand merits and issues brought by the languages we could adopt and their long reaching effects on the organizations, ii) combine them wisely, trying to reduce the overhead due to their assembling. In the first part of this dissertation we study the adoption of modeling and domain specific languages. On the basis of an industrial survey we individuate a list of benefits attainable through these languages, how frequently they can be reached and which techniques permit to improve the chances to obtain a particular benefit. In the same way we study also the common problems which either prevent or hinder the adoption of these languages. We then analyze the processes through which these languages are employed, studying the relative frequency of the usage of the different techniques and the factors influencing it. Finally we present two case-studies performed in a small and in a very large company, with the intent of presenting the peculiarities of the adoption in different contexts. As consequence of adopting specialized languages, many of them have to be employed to represent the complete solution. Therefore in the second part of the thesis we focus on the integration of these languages. Being this topic really new we performed preliminary studies to first understand the phenomenon, studying the different ways through which languages interact and their effects on defectivity. Later we present some prototypal solutions for i) the automatic spotting of cross-language relations, ii) the design of language integration tool support in language workbenches through the exploitation of common meta-metamodeling. This thesis wants to offer a contribution towards the productive adoption of multiple, specific languages in the same software development project, hence polyglot software development. From this approach we should be able to reduce the complexity due to misrepresentation of solutions, offer a better facilities to think about problems and, finally to be able to solve more difficult problems with our limited brain resources. Our results consists in a better understanding of MDD and DSLs adoption in companies. From that we can derive guidelines for practitioners, lesson learned for deploying in companies, depending on the size of the company, and implications for other actors involved in the process: company management and universities. Regarding cross-language relations our contribution is an initial definition of the problem, supported by some empirical evidence to sustain its importance. The solutions we propose are not yet mature but we believe that from them future work can stem

Model-driven engineering for mobile robotic systems: a systematic mapping study

Mobile robots operate in various environments (e.g. aquatic, aerial, or terrestrial), they come in many diverse shapes and they are increasingly becoming parts of our lives. The successful engineering of mobile robotics systems demands the interdisciplinary collaboration of experts from different domains, such as mechanical and electrical engineering, artificial intelligence, and systems engineering. Research and industry have tried to tackle this heterogeneity by proposing a multitude of model-driven solutions to engineer the software of mobile robotics systems. However, there is no systematic study of the state of the art in model-driven engineering (MDE) for mobile robotics systems that could guide research or practitioners in finding model-driven solutions and tools to efficiently engineer mobile robotics systems. The paper is contributing to this direction by providing a map of software engineering research in MDE that investigates (1) which types of robots are supported by existing MDE approaches, (2) the types and characteristics of MRSs that are engineered using MDE approaches, (3) a description of how MDE approaches support the engineering of MRSs, (4) how existing MDE approaches are validated, and (5) how tools support existing MDE approaches. We also provide a replication package to assess, extend, and/or replicate the study. The results of this work and the highlighted challenges can guide researchers and practitioners from robotics and software engineering through the research landscape

1st doctoral symposium of the international conference on software language engineering (SLE) : collected research abstracts, October 11, 2010, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

The first Doctoral Symposium to be organised by the series of International Conferences on Software Language Engineering (SLE) will be held on October 11, 2010 in Eindhoven, as part of the 3rd instance of SLE. This conference series aims to integrate the different sub-communities of the software-language engineering community to foster cross-fertilisation and strengthen research overall. The Doctoral Symposium at SLE 2010 aims to contribute towards these goals by providing a forum for both early and late-stage Ph.D. students to present their research and get detailed feedback and advice from researchers both in and out of their particular research area. Consequently, the main objectives of this event are: – to give Ph.D. students an opportunity to write about and present their research; – to provide Ph.D. students with constructive feedback from their peers and from established researchers in their own and in different SLE sub-communities; – to build bridges for potential research collaboration; and – to foster integrated thinking about SLE challenges across sub-communities. All Ph.D. students participating in the Doctoral Symposium submitted an extended abstract describing their doctoral research. Based on a good set of submisssions we were able to accept 13 submissions for participation in the Doctoral Symposium. These proceedings present final revised versions of these accepted research abstracts. We are particularly happy to note that submissions to the Doctoral Symposium covered a wide range of SLE topics drawn from all SLE sub-communities. In selecting submissions for the Doctoral Symposium, we were supported by the members of the Doctoral-Symposium Selection Committee (SC), representing senior researchers from all areas of the SLE community.We would like to thank them for their substantial effort, without which this Doctoral Symposium would not have been possible. Throughout, they have provided reviews that go beyond the normal format of a review being extra careful in pointing out potential areas of improvement of the research or its presentation. Hopefully, these reviews themselves will already contribute substantially towards the goals of the symposium and help students improve and advance their work. Furthermore, all submitting students were also asked to provide two reviews for other submissions. The members of the SC went out of their way to comment on the quality of these reviews helping students improve their reviewing skills

1st doctoral symposium of the international conference on software language engineering (SLE) : collected research abstracts, October 11, 2010, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

The first Doctoral Symposium to be organised by the series of International Conferences on Software Language Engineering (SLE) will be held on October 11, 2010 in Eindhoven, as part of the 3rd instance of SLE. This conference series aims to integrate the different sub-communities of the software-language engineering community to foster cross-fertilisation and strengthen research overall. The Doctoral Symposium at SLE 2010 aims to contribute towards these goals by providing a forum for both early and late-stage Ph.D. students to present their research and get detailed feedback and advice from researchers both in and out of their particular research area. Consequently, the main objectives of this event are: – to give Ph.D. students an opportunity to write about and present their research; – to provide Ph.D. students with constructive feedback from their peers and from established researchers in their own and in different SLE sub-communities; – to build bridges for potential research collaboration; and – to foster integrated thinking about SLE challenges across sub-communities. All Ph.D. students participating in the Doctoral Symposium submitted an extended abstract describing their doctoral research. Based on a good set of submisssions we were able to accept 13 submissions for participation in the Doctoral Symposium. These proceedings present final revised versions of these accepted research abstracts. We are particularly happy to note that submissions to the Doctoral Symposium covered a wide range of SLE topics drawn from all SLE sub-communities. In selecting submissions for the Doctoral Symposium, we were supported by the members of the Doctoral-Symposium Selection Committee (SC), representing senior researchers from all areas of the SLE community.We would like to thank them for their substantial effort, without which this Doctoral Symposium would not have been possible. Throughout, they have provided reviews that go beyond the normal format of a review being extra careful in pointing out potential areas of improvement of the research or its presentation. Hopefully, these reviews themselves will already contribute substantially towards the goals of the symposium and help students improve and advance their work. Furthermore, all submitting students were also asked to provide two reviews for other submissions. The members of the SC went out of their way to comment on the quality of these reviews helping students improve their reviewing skills

On the Use of Alloy in Engineering Domain Specific Modeling Languages

Domain Specific Modeling Languages (DSMLs) tend to play a central role in modern design processes as they enable the effective involvement of domain experts by focusing on a particular problem domain while abstracting away technical details. In this thesis, we investigate the specification of DSMLs with a particular focus on domain expert driven validation. Mainly, we are interested in developing Alloy-based approaches, allowing the definition of specifications from which instances can be generated and given to the domain experts for the sake of validation. The work we present in this thesis can be divided into three parts: The first part concerns the definition and execution of model transformations defined in Alloy. While Alloy analysis can be used as an execution engine for model transformations, the analysis process is time consuming. Model transformations playing a central role in DSML definitions, the development of a new model transformation language, named F-Alloy, retaining the benefits of Alloy with the added property of being efficiently computable was necessary. The second part focuses on validation. In that domain, our first contribution is a novel approach to the validation of model transformations called Visualization-Based Validation (VBV). VBV relies on the review by domain experts of intuitive depictions of model transformation traces to validate model transformation specifications. The whole process is made efficient by the usage of hybrid analysis, a combination of Alloy analysis and F-Alloy interpretation, allowing to reduce the time needed to analyze model transformations to the time needed to analyze its source. Our second contribution in the validation area is the definition of an Alloy-based approach to the specification and validation of DSMLs and of a design process defining how DSMLs can be validated using Alloy analysis at each iteration of the process. More precisely, we present how the abstract syntax, concrete syntax and operational semantics of a DSML can be defined using Alloy and F-Alloy, and show that the validation of a DSML' s abstract syntax and semantics benefits from the application of its concrete syntax. The third and last part aims at bringing those contributions to the practical world. To achieve this we developed a tool named Lightning implementing the aforementioned contributions. This tool, which belongs to the category of language workbenches, has been successfully used in an inter-disciplinary collaboration to define the Robot Perception System Language (RPSL). Based on this definition of RPSL, a framework has been developed to allow the execution of so called design space explorations. This framework represents a successful application of our approach to the real world problem of having RPSL specifications validated by experts in robotics

Generation of domain-specific language-to-language transformation languages

The increasing complexity of software systems entailed by the imposed requirements and involved stakeholders creates new challenges towards software development and turns it into a complex task. Nowadays, sophisticated development approaches and tools are needed to handle this complexity. Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) provides means to abstract from the details of a software system during the development phase by using models. Domain-Specific Modeling (DSM), a branch of MDE, tackles the complexity by proposing to use modeling languages which are restricted towards the solution space of the targeted problem domain. These Domain-Specific Visual Languages (DSVLs) are used in the DSM approach to create models in the restricted design space making the generation of modeled solutions feasible and providing a basis for the communication between various stakeholders. Since for each of the targeted domains a DSVL is needed, language workbenches emerged which support the development of DSVLs. During the development of a DSVL the semantics of the language has to be defined and, if the DSVL changes, existing models created using the DSVL have to be migrated. Furthermore, models are represented in a specific format hindering the application of, e.g., mature verification methods and tools. To solve these tasks, model transformations are promoted to transform models into different representations conforming to other DSVL. This thesis presents a new kind of model transformation languages, which can be used to handle the arising tasks during the development of DSVLs. These transformation languages are tailored towards the domain of "computational model transformations between DSVLs". The presented transformation languages are based on graph-transformation approaches and simplify the specification of computations by utilizing Plotkin's Strucural Operation Semantics (SOS), and thereby facilitate the definition of computation steps in a declarative way. This approach suffers from the versatility in the scope of DSVLs and thereby requires techniques to reduce the development costs of the transformation languages for different source and target languages. The key to reduce the development costs is the application of the Domain-specific, Full-generation, Service orientation (DFS) approach for the domain of model transformation languages. The application of domain-specifc concept results in graph-based, domain-specific two-level transformation languages. The essence of those languages is captured in a pattern describing possible two-level transformation languages. This pattern is used as the basis for the definition of a generator for those kind of transformation languages making full-generation feasible. The semantics of pattern matching and rewriting rules in the context of graph-based transformations are defined by the utilization of existing graph-transformation tools