Classification of model transformation techniques used in UML-based Web engineering

Abstract

Software development techniques are continuously evolving with the goal of solving the main problems that still affect the building and maintenance of software systems: time, costs and error-proneness. Model-driven engineering (MDE) approaches aim to reduce at least some of these problems providing techniques for the construction of models and the specification of transformation rules, tool support and automatic generation of code and documentation. The method of resolution of MDE is to first build models, which are independent of the platform, transforming them in later stages to technological-dependent models, and to achieve automatic model and code generation based on transformation rules. Web engineering is a domain where model-driven approaches can be used to address evolution and adaptation of Web software to continuously emerging new platforms and changes in technologies. We present an overview of the development process of the Unified Modelling Language (UML)-based Web engineering (UWE) defined as an MDE approach. The main characteristic of UWE is the use of standards including the UML, XML metadata interchange as model exchange, meta-object facility for metamodelling, model-driven architecture and the transformation language query-view-transformation. We focus on the model transformation aspects of the UWE process.