A Case for Rebel, a DSL for product specifications

International audienceno abstrac

Constraint-based Run-time State Migration for Live Modeling

Live modeling enables modelers to incrementally update models as they are running and get immediate feedback about the impact of their changes. Changes introduced in a model may trigger inconsistencies between the model and its run-time state (e.g., deleting the current state in a statemachine); effectively requiring to migrate the run-time state to comply with the updated model. In this paper, we introduce an approach that enables to automatically migrate such runtime state based on declarative constraints defined by the language designer. We illustrate the approach using Nextep, a meta-modeling language for defining invariants and migration constraints on run-time state models. When a model changes, Nextep employs model finding techniques, backed by a solver, to automatically infer a new run-time model that satisfies the declared constraints. We apply Nextep to define migration strategies for two DSLs, and report on its expressiveness and performance

Solving the bank with Rebel: on the design of the Rebel specification language and its application inside a bank

Large organizations like banks suffer from the ever growing complexity of their systems. Evolving the software becomes harder and harder since a single change can affect a much larger part of the system than predicted upfront. A large contributing factor to this problem is that the actual domain knowledge is often implicit, incomplete, or out of date, making it difficult to reason about the correct behavior of the system as a whole. With Rebel we aim to capture and centralize the domain knowledge and relate it to the running systems. Rebel is a formal specification language for controlling the intrinsic complexity of software for financial enterprise systems. In collaboration with ING, a large Dutch bank, we developed the Rebel specification language and an Integrated Specification Environment (ISE), currently offering automated simulation and checking of Rebel specifications using a Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) solver. In this paper we report on our design choices for Rebel, the implementation and features of the ISE, and our initial observations on the application of Rebel inside the bank

Constraint-based run-time state migration for live modeling

Live modeling enables modelers to incrementally update models as they are running and get immediate feedback about the impact of their changes. Changes introduced in a model may trigger inconsistencies between the model and its run-time state (e.g., deleting the current state in a statemachine); effectively requiring to migrate the run-time state to comply with the updated model. In this paper, we introduce an approach that enables to automatically migrate such runtime state based on declarative constraints defined by the language designer. We illustrate the approach using Nextep, a meta-modeling language for defining invariants and migration constraints on run-time state models. When a model changes, Nextep employs model finding techniques, backed by a solver, to automatically infer a new run-time model that satisfies the declared constraints. We apply Nextep to define migration strategies for two DSLs, and report on its expressiveness and performance

ICST 2021 version of Rebel2

This version contains the information presented in the ICST'21 'Modeling with Mocking' paper

ICST 2021 version of Rebel2

This version contains the information presented in the ICST'21 'Modeling with Mocking' paper