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

A Constrained Object Model for Configuration Based Workflow Composition

Automatic or assisted workflow composition is a field of intense research for applications to the world wide web or to business process modeling. Workflow composition is traditionally addressed in various ways, generally via theorem proving techniques. Recent research observed that building a composite workflow bears strong relationships with finite model search, and that some workflow languages can be defined as constrained object metamodels . This lead to consider the viability of applying configuration techniques to this problem, which was proven feasible. Constrained based configuration expects a constrained object model as input. The purpose of this document is to formally specify the constrained object model involved in ongoing experiments and research using the Z specification language.Comment: This is an extended version of the article published at BPM'05, Third International Conference on Business Process Management, Nancy Franc

Diagnosis of the significance of inconsistencies in software designs: a framework and its experimental evaluation

This paper presents: (a) a framework for assessing the significance of inconsistencies which arise in object-oriented design models that describe software systems from multiple perspectives, and (b) the findings of a series of experiments conducted to evaluate it. The framework allows the definition of significance criteria and measures the significance of inconsistencies as beliefs for the satisfiability of these criteria. The experiments conducted to evaluate it indicate that criteria definable in the framework have the power to create elaborate rankings of inconsistencies in models

TURTLE-P: a UML profile for the formal validation of critical and distributed systems

The timed UML and RT-LOTOS environment, or TURTLE for short, extends UML class and activity diagrams with composition and temporal operators. TURTLE is a real-time UML profile with a formal semantics expressed in RT-LOTOS. Further, it is supported by a formal validation toolkit. This paper introduces TURTLE-P, an extended profile no longer restricted to the abstract modeling of distributed systems. Indeed, TURTLE-P addresses the concrete descriptions of communication architectures, including quality of service parameters (delay, jitter, etc.). This new profile enables co-design of hardware and software components with extended UML component and deployment diagrams. Properties of these diagrams can be evaluated and/or validated thanks to the formal semantics given in RT-LOTOS. The application of TURTLE-P is illustrated with a telecommunication satellite system

Using formal metamodels to check consistency of functional views in information systems specification

UML notations require adaptation for applications such as Information Systems (IS). Thus we have defined IS-UML. The purpose of this article is twofold. First, we propose an extension to this language to deal with functional aspects of IS. We use two views to specify IS transactions: the first one is defined as a combination of behavioural UML diagrams (collaboration and state diagrams), and the second one is based on the definition of specific classes of an extended class diagram. The final objective of the article is to consider consistency issues between the various diagrams of an IS-UML specification. In common with other UML languages, we use a metamodel to define IS-UML. We use class diagrams to summarize the metamodel structure and a formal language, B, for the full metamodel. This allows us to formally express consistency checks and mapping rules between specific metamodel concepts. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

WSCDL to WSBPEL: A Case Study of ATL-based Transformation

The ATLAS Transformation Language (ATL) is a hybrid transformation language that combines declarative and imperative programming elements and provides means to define model transformations. Most transformations using ATL reported in the literature show a simplified use of ATL, and often involve a single transformation. However, in more realistic situations, multiple transformations may be necessary, especially in case the original input/output models are not represented in the metametamodeling representation expected by the transformation engine. In this paper, we discuss a model transformation from service choreography (WSCDL) to service orchestration (WSBPEL), which cannot be performed in a single ATL transformation due to the mismatch between the concrete XML syntax of these languages and the metametamodeling representation expected by the ATL transformation engine. This requires auxiliary transformations in which this mismatch is resolved. In principle, the required auxiliary transformations can be implemented using XSLT or a general-purpose programming language like Java. However, in our case study, we evaluate the use of ATL to perform these transformations. We exploit ATL by leveraging the ATL's XML\ud injection and the XML extraction mechanisms to perform the overall transformation in terms of a transformation chain