Model Driven Tool Interoperability in Practice

International audienceModel Driven Engineering (MDE) advocates the use of models, metamodels and model transformations to revisit some of the classical operations in software engineering. MDE has been mostly used with success in forward and reverse engineering (for software development and better maintenance, respectively). Supporting system interoperability is a third important area of applicability for MDE. The particular case of tool interoperability is currently receiving a lot of interest. In this paper, we describe some experiments in this area that have been performed in the context of open source modeling efforts. Taking stock of these achievements, we propose a general framework where various tools are associated to implicit or explicit metamodels. One of the interesting properties of such an organization is that it allows designers starting some software engineering activity with an informal light-weight tool and carrying it out later on in a more complete or formal context. We analyze such situations and discuss the advantages of using MDE to build a general tool interoperability framework

Formal verification techniques for model transformations: A tridimensional classification

In Model Driven Engineering (Mde), models are first-class citizens, and model transformation is Mde's "heart and soul". Since model transformations are executed for a family of (conforming) models, their validity becomes a crucial issue. This paper proposes to explore the question of the formal verification of model transformation properties through a tridimensional approach: the transformation involved, the properties of interest addressed, and the formal verification techniques used to establish the properties. This work is intended for a double audience. For newcomers, it provides a tutorial introduction to the field of formal verification of model transformations. For readers more familiar with formal methods and model transformations, it proposes a literature review (although not systematic) of the contributions of the field. Overall, this work allows to better understand the evolution, trends and current practice in the domain of model transformation verification. This work opens an interesting research line for building an engineering of model transformation verification guided by the notion of model transformation intent

Annual Report on CHOReOS Dissemination - 1st year (D9.3.1)

This report summarizes achievement of the CHOReOS project in terms of disseminating project's goals and results during the first year. It further provides links to the concrete material that has been disseminated so far, hence enabling the interested reader to get access to the published material to know more about CHOReOS

An investigation of requirements traceability practices in software companies in Malaysia

Requirement traceability (RT) is one of the critical activity of good requirements management and an important part of development projects. At the same time, it improves the quality of software products. Nevertheless, industrial practitioners are challenged by this lack of guidance or results which serve as a rule or guide in establishing effective traceability in their projects. The outcome of this is that practitioners are ill-informed as to the best or most efficient means of accomplishing their tasks, such as found in software companies. Notwithstanding the lack of guidance, there are a number of commonly accepted practices which can guide industrial practitioners with respect to trace the requirements in their projects. This study aims to determine the practices of RT through conducting a systematic literature review. Also, this study conducted a survey for investigating the use of RT practices in the software companies at northern region of Malaysia. Finally, a series of interviews with practitioners were carried out to know the reasons that influence on the use of these practices in software development. The findings showed that majority software companies do not use traceability practices for tracing requirements due to financial issues and the lack of knowledge of these practices. This study presented empirical evidence about the use of RT practices among software companies. Thus, the findings of this study can assist practitioners to select RT practices, and also enables researchers to find gaps and pointers for future study in this study domain

Survey of Template-Based Code Generation

L'automatisation de la génération des artefacts textuels à partir des modèles est une étape critique dans l'Ingénierie Dirigée par les Modèles (IDM). C'est une transformation de modèles utile pour générer le code source, sérialiser les modèles dans de stockages persistents, générer les rapports ou encore la documentation. Parmi les différents paradigmes de transformation de modèle-au-texte, la génération de code basée sur les templates (TBCG) est la plus utilisée en IDM. La TBCG est une technique de génération qui produit du code à partir des spécifications de haut niveau appelées templates. Compte tenu de la diversité des outils et des approches, il est nécessaire de classifier et de comparer les techniques de TBCG existantes afin d'apporter un soutien approprié aux développeurs. L'objectif de ce mémoire est de mieux comprendre les caractéristiques des techniques de TBCG, identifier les tendances dans la recherche, et éxaminer l'importance du rôle de l'IDM par rapport à cette approche. J'évalue également l'expressivité, la performance et la mise à l'échelle des outils associés selon une série de modèles. Je propose une étude systématique de cartographie de la littérature qui décrit une intéressante vue d'ensemble de la TBCG et une étude comparitive des outils de la TBCG pour mieux guider les dévloppeurs dans leur choix. Cette étude montre que les outils basés sur les modèles offrent plus d'expressivité tandis que les outils basés sur le code sont les plus performants. Enfin, Xtend2 offre le meilleur compromis entre l'expressivité et la performance.A critical step in model-driven engineering (MDE) is the automatic synthesis of a textual artifact from models. This is a very useful model transformation to generate application code, to serialize the model in persistent storage, generate documentation or reports. Among the various model-to-text transformation paradigms, Template-Based Code Generation (TBCG) is the most popular in MDE. TBCG is a synthesis technique that produces code from high-level specifications, called templates. It is a popular technique in MDE given that they both emphasize abstraction and automation. Given the diversity of tools and approaches, it is necessary to classify and compare existing TBCG techniques to provide appropriate support to developers. The goal of this thesis is to better understand the characteristics of TBCG techniques, identify research trends, and assess the importance of the role of MDE in this code synthesis approach. We also evaluate the expressiveness, performance and scalability of the associated tools based on a range of models that implement critical patterns. To this end, we conduct a systematic mapping study of the literature that paints an interesting overview of TBCG and a comparative study on TBCG tools to better guide developers in their choices. This study shows that model-based tools offer more expressiveness whereas code-based tools performed much faster. Xtend2 offers the best compromise between the expressiveness and the performance

Towards Language-Oriented Modeling

In this habilitation à diriger des recherches (HDR), I review a decade of research work in the fields of Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) and Software Language Engineering (SLE). I propose contributions to support a language-oriented modeling, with the particular focus on enabling early validation & verification (V&V) of software-intensive systems. I first present foundational concepts and engineering facilities which help to capture the core domain knowledge into the various heterogeneous concerns of DSMLs (aka. metamodeling in the small), with a particular focus on executable DSMLs to automate the development of dynamic V&V tools. Then, I propose structural and behavioral DSML interfaces, and associated composition operators to reuse and integrate multiple DSMLs (aka. metamodeling in the large).In these research activities I explore various breakthroughs in terms of modularity and reusability of DSMLs. I also propose an original approach which bridges the gap between the concurrency theory and the algorithm theory, to integrate a formal concurrency model into the execution semantics of DSMLs. All the contributions have been implemented in software platforms — the language workbench Melange and the GEMOC studio – and experienced in real-world case studies to assess their validity. In this context, I also founded the GEMOC initiative, an attempt to federate the community on the grand challenge of the globalization of modeling languages

Managing Consistency of Business Process Models across Abstraction Levels

Process models support the transition from business requirements to IT implementations. An organization that adopts process modeling often maintain several co-existing models of the same business process. These models target different abstraction levels and stakeholder perspectives. Maintaining consistency among these models has become a major challenge for such an organization. For instance, propagating changes requires identifying tacit correspondences among the models, which may be only in the memories of their original creators or may be lost entirely. Although different tools target specific needs of different roles, we lack appropriate support for checking whether related models maintained by different groups of specialists are still consistent after independent editing. As a result, typical consistency management tasks such as tracing, differencing, comparing, refactoring, merging, conformance checking, change notification, and versioning are frequently done manually, which is time-consuming and error-prone. This thesis presents the Shared Model, a framework designed to improve support for consistency management and impact analysis in process modeling. The framework is designed as a result of a comprehensive industrial study that elicited typical correspondence patterns between Business and IT process models and the meaning of consistency between them. The framework encompasses three major techniques and contributions: 1) matching heuristics to automatically discover complex correspondences patterns among the models, and to maintain traceability among model parts---elements and fragments; 2) a generator of edit operations to compute the difference between process models; 3) a process model synchronizer, capable of consistently propagating changes made to any model to its counterpart. We evaluated the Shared Model experimentally. The evaluation shows that the framework can consistently synchronize Business and IT views related by correspondence patterns, after non-simultaneous independent editing