Enforcing fine-grained access control for secure collaborative modelling using bidirectional transformations

Csaba Debreceni,Dániel Varró,István Ráth,Gábor Bergmann

doi:10.1007/s10270-017-0631-8

Abstract

Large-scale model-driven system engineering projects are carried out collaboratively. Engineering artefacts stored in model repositories are developed in either offline (checkout–modify–commit) or online (GoogleDoc-style) scenarios. Complex systems frequently integrate models and components developed by different teams, vendors and suppliers. Thus, confidentiality and integrity of design artefacts need to be protected in accordance with access control policies. We propose a secure collaborative modelling approach where fine-grained access control for models is strictly enforced by bidirectional model transformations. Collaborators obtain filtered local copies of the model containing only those model elements which they are allowed to read; write access control policies are checked on the server upon submitting model changes. We present a formal collaboration schema which provenly guarantees certain correctness constraints, and its adaption to online scenarios with on-the-fly change propagation and the integration into existing version control systems to support offline scenarios. The approach is illustrated, and its scalability is evaluated using a case study of the MONDO EU project.

Highlights

Introduction1.1 Collaborative modelling in MDECommunicated by Dr Jörg Kienzle and Alexander Pretschner.The original version of this article was revised due to a retrospective Open Access order.The adoption of model-driven engineering (MDE) by system integrators (like airframers or car manufacturers) has been steadily increasing in the recent years [55], since it enables to detect design flaws early and generate various artefacts (source code, documentation, configuration tables, etc.) automatically from high-quality system models.The use of models intensifies collaboration between distributed teams of different stakeholders (system integrators, software engineers of component providers/suppliers, hardware engineers, certification authorities, etc.) via model repositories, which significantly enhances productivity and reduces time to market
1.1 Collaborative modelling in MDECommunicated by Dr Jörg Kienzle and Alexander Pretschner.The original version of this article was revised due to a retrospective Open Access order.The adoption of model-driven engineering (MDE) by system integrators has been steadily increasing in the recent years [55], since it enables to detect design flaws early and generate various artefacts automatically from high-quality system models.The use of models intensifies collaboration between distributed teams of different stakeholders via model repositories, which significantly enhances productivity and reduces time to market
Offline Collaboration Q2 What is the overhead of using query-based access control over an existing version control system (VCS)? Q2.1 How scalable is our approach to increasing model size? Q2.2 How scalable is our approach to increasing number of front repositories? Q2.3 How scalable is our approach to increasing size of committed changes?

Summary

Introduction

1.1 Collaborative modelling in MDECommunicated by Dr Jörg Kienzle and Alexander Pretschner.The original version of this article was revised due to a retrospective Open Access order.The adoption of model-driven engineering (MDE) by system integrators (like airframers or car manufacturers) has been steadily increasing in the recent years [55], since it enables to detect design flaws early and generate various artefacts (source code, documentation, configuration tables, etc.) automatically from high-quality system models.The use of models intensifies collaboration between distributed teams of different stakeholders (system integrators, software engineers of component providers/suppliers, hardware engineers, certification authorities, etc.) via model repositories, which significantly enhances productivity and reduces time to market. The adoption of model-driven engineering (MDE) by system integrators (like airframers or car manufacturers) has been steadily increasing in the recent years [55], since it enables to detect design flaws early and generate various artefacts (source code, documentation, configuration tables, etc.) automatically from high-quality system models. Collaboration scenarios include traditional offline collaborations with asynchronous long transactions (i.e. to check out an artefact from a version control system and commit local changes afterwards) as well as online collaborations with short and synchronous transactions (e.g. when a group of collaborators simultaneously edit a model, to well-known online document/spreadsheet editors). Several collaborative modelling frameworks (like CDO [49], EMFStore [50]) exist to support such scenarios

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