This thesis presents the extension of the graph transformation language SDM (Story Driven Modeling) with generic and reflective features as well as the definition of type checking rules for this language. The generic and reflective features aim at improving the reusability and expressiveness of SDM, whereas the type checking rules will ensure the type-safety of graph transformations.
This thesis starts with an explanation of the relevant concepts as well as a description of the context in order to provide the reader with a better understanding of our approach. The model driven development of software, today considered as the standard paradigm, is generally based on the use of domain-specific languages such as MATLAB Simulink and Stateflow. To increase the quality, the reliability,and the efficiency of models and the generated code, checking and elimination of detected guideline violations defined in huge catalogues has become an essential, but error-prone and time-consuming task in the development process. The MATE/MAJA projects, which are based on the use of the SDM language, aim at an automation of this task for MATLAB Simulink/Stateflow models. Modeling
guidelines can be specified on a very high level of abstraction by means of graph transformations. Moreover, these specifications allow for the generation of guideline checking tools. Unfortunately, most graph transformation languages do not offer appropriate concepts for reuse of specification fragments - a MUST, when we deal with hundreds of guidelines. As a consequence we present an extension of the SDM language which supports the definition of generic rewrite rules and combines them with the reflective programming mechanisms of Java and the model repository interface standard JMI.
Reusability and expressiveness are not the only aspects we want to improve. Another fundamental aspect of graph transformations must be ensured: their correctness in order to prevent type errors while executing the transformations. Checking and testing the graph transformations manually would ruin the benefit obtained by the automation of the guideline checking and by the generic and reflective features. Therefore, we propose in this work a type-checking method for graph transformations. We introduce a new notation for rules of inference and define a type system for SDM. We also proposed an algorithm to apply this type system.
We illustrate and evaluate both contributions of our work by applying them on running examples. Proposals for other additional SDM features as well as for possible improvements of our type checking open new perspectives and future research to pursue our work
