Introduction to the special issue on search‐based software engineering (NasBASE 2015)

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135371/1/smr1837.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135371/2/smr1837_am.pd

Model Transformation Testing and Debugging: A Survey

Model transformations are the key technique in Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) to manipulate and construct models. As a consequence, the correctness of software systems built with MDE approaches relies mainly on the correctness of model transformations, and thus, detecting and locating bugs in model transformations have been popular research topics in recent years. This surge of work has led to a vast literature on model transformation testing and debugging, which makes it challenging to gain a comprehensive view of the current state of the art. This is an obstacle for newcomers to this topic and MDE practitioners to apply these approaches. This paper presents a survey on testing and debugging model transformations based on the analysis of \nPapers~papers on the topics. We explore the trends, advances, and evolution over the years, bringing together previously disparate streams of work and providing a comprehensive view of these thriving areas. In addition, we present a conceptual framework to understand and categorise the different proposals. Finally, we identify several open research challenges and propose specific action points for the model transformation community.This work is partially supported by the European Commission (FEDER) and Junta de Andalucia under projects APOLO (US-1264651) and EKIPMENT-PLUS (P18-FR-2895), by the Spanish Government (FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación – Agencia Estatal de Investigación) under projects HORATIO (RTI2018-101204-B-C21), COSCA (PGC2018-094905-B-I00) and LOCOSS (PID2020-114615RB-I00), by the Austrian Science Fund (P 28519-N31, P 30525-N31), and by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs and the National Foundation for Research, Technology and Development (CDG

Search-Based Information Systems Migration: Case Studies on Refactoring Model Transformations

Information systems are built to last for decades; however, the reality suggests otherwise. Companies are often pushed to modernize their systems to reduce costs, meet new policies, improve the security, or to be more competitive. Model-driven engineering (MDE) approaches are used in several successful projects to migrate systems. MDE raises the level of abstraction for complex systems by relying on models as first-class entities. These models are maintained and transformed using model transformations (MT), which are expressed by means of transformation rules to transform models from source to target meta-models. The migration process for information systems may take years for large systems. Thus, many changes are going to be introduced to the transformations to reflect the new business requirements, fix bugs, or to meet the updated metamodels. Therefore, the quality of MT should be continually checked and improved during the evolution process to avoid future technical debts. Most MT programs are written as one large module due to the lack of refactoring/modularization and regression testing tools support. In object-oriented systems, composition and modularization are used to tackle the issues of maintainability and testability. Moreover, refactoring is used to improve the non-functional attributes of the software, making it easier and faster for developers to work and manipulate the code. Thus, we proposed an intelligent computational search approach to automatically modularize MT. Furthermore, we took inspiration from a well-defined quality assessment model for object-oriented design to propose a quality assessment model for MT in particular. The results showed a 45% improvement in the developer’s speed to detect or fix bugs, and developers made 40% less errors when performing a task with the optimized version. Since refactoring operations changes the transformation, it is important to apply regression testing to check their correctness and robustness. Thus, we proposed a multi-objective test case selection technique to find the best trade-off between coverage and computational cost. Results showed a drastic speed-up of the testing process while still showing a good testing performance. The survey with practitioners highlighted the need of such maintenance and evolution framework to improve the quality and efficiency of the existing migration process.Ph.D.College of Engineering & Computer ScienceUniversity of Michigan-Dearbornhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/149153/1/Bader Alkhazi Final Dissertation.pdfDescription of Bader Alkhazi Final Dissertation.pdf : Restricted to UM users only

ModelVars2SPL : an automated approach to reengineer model variants into software product lines

Orientadora : Profª. Drª. Silvia R. VergilioCoorientador : Prof Dr. Roberto E. Lopez-HerrejonTese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Ciências Exatas, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Informática. Defesa: Curitiba, 11/04/2017Inclui referências : f. 74-82Área de concentração : Ciência da computaçãoResumo: Linhas de Produto de Software (LPSs) são famílias de sistemas de software relacionados que são desenvolvidos para um segmento de mercado ou domínio. Comumente, LPSs surgem de um conjunto de variantes existentes, quando a manutenção e/ou evolução individuais tornam-se complexas. Contudo, as abordagens encontradas na literatura para extração de LPS a partir de variantes existentes não dão suporte a modelos de projeto, são parcialmente automatizadas, ou não refletem restrições de domínio em termos de combinação de características. Para lidar com estas limitações, o objetivo deste trabalho é apresentar uma abordagem automatizada para fazer a reengenharia de variantes de modelos em uma LPS, chamada ModelVars2SPL (Variantes de Modelos para Linha de Produto de Software, do Inglês Model Variants to Software Product Line). A entrada para a abordagem é um conjunto de diagramas de classe Linguagem de Modelagem Unificada (UML) e uma lista de características que estes implementam. Todo o processo de reengenharia é coberto, e a saída inclui (i) um Modelo de Características, que representa a combinação de características das variantes de entrada, e (ii) uma Arquitetura de Linha de Produto, que representa uma arquitetura global com características anotadas. O processo de reengenharia da ModelVars2SPL é composto por quatro passos, sendo dois deles apoiados em técnicas baseadas em busca, e os dois outros baseados em algoritmos determinísticos. Não existe a necessidade de especialistas humanos para obter soluções. Para avaliar a abordagem proposta, foi conduzido um experimento para aferir a qualidade das soluções obtidas. A qualidade dos Modelos de Características e das Arquiteturas de Linha de Produto foi medida considerando-se o quão bem as variantes de entrada foram representadas. Além disso, a qualidade das saídas em cada passo da abordagem foi avaliada levando-se em consideração os objetivos do processo de reengenharia. Para a experimentação utilizaram-se dez estudos de caso representando dois cenários diferentes. Os resultados da avaliação mostram que a abordagem consegue obter soluções com alto grau de corretude em termos de representação das variantes de entrada, e que as saídas dos passos estão de acordo com as fases do processo de reengenharia. Com base em um exemplo de uso de uma solução mostra-se como os artefatos de LPS obtidos facilitam a atividade de manutenção. Palavras-chave: Reúso, Reengenharia, Linha de Produto de Software, Extração de LPS, Engenharia de Software Baseada em Busca.Abstract: Software Product Lines (SPLs) are families of related software systems developed for specific market segments or domains. SPLs commonly emerge from sets of existing variants when their individual maintenance and/or evolution become complex. However, current approaches for SPL extraction from existing variants do not support design models, are partially automated, or do not reflect domain constraints in terms of feature combinations. To tackle these limitations, the goal of this work is to present an automated approach to reengineer model variants into an SPL, called ModelVars2SPL (Model Variants to Software Product Line). The input of the approach is a set of Unified Modeling Language (UML) class diagrams and the list of features they implement. All the reengineering process is covered, and the output includes (i) a Feature Model, which represents the combinations of features of the input variants, and (ii) a Product Line Architecture, which represents a global architecture with feature-related annotations. The reengineering process of ModelVars2SPL is composed of four steps, two of them rely on searchbased techniques and the others are based on deterministic algorithms. There is no need for human experts for obtaining solutions. We conducted an experiment to evaluate the quality of the solutions obtained with the proposed approach. The quality of the FMs and PLAs was measured by considering how well these artifacts represent the input variants. Furthermore, we evaluate the quality of the outputs in each step of the approach taking into account the goals of the reengineering process. For the experimentation we used ten case studies representing two di_erent scenarios. The results of the evaluation show that the approach can obtain solutions with high degree of correctness in terms of representing the input variants, and that the outputs of the steps are in accordance to the phases of the reengineering process. Based on an example of use we show how the obtained FM and PLA make easier the maintenance activity. Keywords: Reuse, Reengineering, Software Product Line, SPL extraction, Search-Based Software Engineering