Unified Reversible Life Cycle for Future Interoperable Enterprise Distributed Information Systems

Best Paper AwardInternational audienceThis paper aims at improving the re-implementation of existing information systems when they are called to be involved in a system of systems, i.e. a federation of enterprise information systems that interoperate. The idea is reusing the local experiences coming from the development of the original information system with the process of Model Discovery and Ontological approach. We give first, a review of ongoing researches on Enterprise Interoperability. The MDA can help to transform concepts and models from the conceptual level to the implementation. The HLA standard, initially designed for military M&S purpose, can be transposed for enterprise interoperability at the implementation level, reusing the years of experiences in distributed systems. From these postulates, we propose a MDA/HLA lifecycle to implement distributed enterprise models from the conceptual level of federated enterprise interoperability approach. In addition to this classical development, we propose a model reversal methodology to help re-implement the legacy information system, in order to achieve the interoperability with other systems

A case study on model driven data integration for data centric software development.

Model Driven Data Integration is a data integration approach that proactively incorporates and utilizes metadata across the data integration process. By decoupling data and metadata, MDDI drastically reduces complexity of data integration; whilst also providing an integrated standard development method, which is associated with Model Driven Architecture. This paper introduces a case study to adopt MDA technology as an MDDI framework for data centric software development; including data merging and data customization for data mining. A data merging model is also proposed to define relationships between different models at a conceptual level which is then transformed into a physical model. In this case study we collect and integrate historical data from various universities into the Data Warehouse system in order to develop student intervention services through data mining

Conceptual Modeling in Law: An Interdisciplinary Research Agenda

The article describes how different approaches from the IS field of conceptual modeling should be transferred to the legal domain to enhance comprehensibility of legal regulations and contracts. It is further described how this in turn would benefit the IS discipline. The findings emphasize the importance of further interdisciplinary research on that topic. A research agenda that synthesizes the presented ideas is proposed based on a framework that structures the research field. Researchers from both disciplines, IS and Law, that are interested in this field should use the research agenda to position their research and to derive new and innovative research questions

Formal support for model driven development with graph transformation techniques

Also published online by CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org, ISSN 1613-0073) In this paper we give an overview of our approach for Model Driven Development (MDD), based on graph transformation techniques. In MDD, models are the primary assets in the development process. They are not only used for documentation, but also for analysis, simulation, code and test cases generation. Thus, model transformation becomes a central activity. As models can be formally described as attributed, typed graphs, we can use formal graph transformation techniques for their manipulation. In this paper, we give an overview of the different kinds of model transformation and suitable graph transformation techniques. Moreover, graph transformation can be combined with meta-modelling for further expressivity. Some of these techniques have been recently implemented in the Metamodelling tool AToM3. We use the tool to introduce an example in the component-based modelling and simulation area

CAViT: a Consistency Maintenance Framework based on Transformation Contracts

Design by contract is a software correctness methodology for procedural and object-oriented software. It relies on logical assertions to detect implementation mistakes at run-time or to proof the absence thereof at compile-time. Design by contract has found a new application in model driven engineering, a methodology that aims to manage the complexity of frameworks by relying on models and transformations. A ``transformation contract\u27\u27 is a pair of constraints that together describe the effect of a transformation rule on the set of models contained in its transformation definition: the postcondition describes the model consistency state that the rule can establish provided that its precondition is satisfied. A transformation contract of a rule can be maintained automatically by calling the rule (1) as soon as the invariant corresponding to its postcondition is violated and (2) provided that its precondition is satisfied. Domain specific visual languages can facilitate the implementation of the actual transformation rules since they hide the complexity of graph transformation algorithms and standards for tool interoperability. In this talk, we describe CAViT: a framework that integrates a visual model transformation tool with a design by contract tool by relying on OMG standards such as UML, OCL and MOF

Action semantics of unified modeling language

The Uni ed Modeling Language or UML, as a visual and general purpose modeling language, has been around for more than a decade, gaining increasingly wide application and becoming the de-facto industrial standard for modeling software systems. However, the dynamic semantics of UML behaviours are only described in natural languages. Speci cation in natural languages inevitably involves vagueness, lacks reasonability and discourages mechanical language implementation. Such semi-formality of UML causes wide concern for researchers, including us. The formal semantics of UML demands more readability and extensibility due to its fast evolution and a wider range of users. Therefore we adopt Action Semantics (AS), mainly created by Peter Mosses, to formalize the dynamic semantics of UML, because AS can satisfy these needs advantageously compared to other frameworks. Instead of de ning UML directly, we design an action language, called ALx, and use it as the intermediary between a typical executable UML and its action semantics. ALx is highly heterogeneous, combining the features of Object Oriented Programming Languages, Object Query Languages, Model Description Languages and more complex behaviours like state machines. Adopting AS to formalize such a heterogeneous language is in turn of signi cance in exploring the adequacy and applicability of AS. In order to give assurance of the validity of the action semantics of ALx, a prototype ALx-to-Java translator is implemented, underpinned by our formal semantic description of the action language and using the Model Driven Approach (MDA). We argue that MDA is a feasible way of implementing this source-to-source language translator because the cornerstone of MDA, UML, is adequate to specify the static aspect of programming languages, and MDA provides executable transformation languages to model mapping rules between languages. We also construct a translator using a commonly-used conventional approach, in i which a tool is employed to generate the lexical scanner and the parser, and then other components including the type checker, symbol table constructor, intermediate representation producer and code generator, are coded manually. Then we compare the conventional approach with the MDA. The result shows that MDA has advantages over the conventional method in the aspect of code quality but is inferior to the latter in terms of system performance

Metamodel-based model conformance and multiview consistency checking

Model-driven development, using languages such as UML and BON, often makes use of multiple diagrams (e.g., class and sequence diagrams) when modeling systems. These diagrams, presenting different views of a system of interest, may be inconsistent. A metamodel provides a unifying framework in which to ensure and check consistency, while at the same time providing the means to distinguish between valid and invalid models, that is, conformance. Two formal specifications of the metamodel for an object-oriented modeling language are presented, and it is shown how to use these specifications for model conformance and multiview consistency checking. Comparisons are made in terms of completeness and the level of automation each provide for checking multiview consistency and model conformance. The lessons learned from applying formal techniques to the problems of metamodeling, model conformance, and multiview consistency checking are summarized