Automatically Deriving the Specification of Model Editing Operations from Meta-Models

Abstract

To optimally support continuous model evolution in model-based software development, adequate tool support for model version management is needed. Instead of reporting model differences to the developer line-by-line or element-wise, their grouping into semantically associated change sets helps in understanding model differences. Edit operations are the concept of choice to group such change sets. Considering visual models in particular, edit operations preserve a basic form of consistency such that changed models can still be viewed in a standard editor. Using edit operations for the version management of domain-specific models requires tool developers to specify all necessary edit operations in order to produce or replicate every possible change on a model. However, edit operations can be numerous and their manual specification is therefore tedious and error-prone. In this paper, we present a precise approach to specify a complete set of consistency-preserving edit operations for a given modeling language. The approach is supported by a generator and has been evaluated in four case studies covering several visual modeling languages and standard editors.