Model-driven Engineering Activities Research Articles

Facet-oriented Modelling

Models are the central assets in model-driven engineering (MDE), as they are actively used in all phases of software development. Models are built using metamodel-based languages, and so objects in models are typed by a metamodel class. This typing is static, established at creation time, and cannot be changed later. Therefore, objects in MDE are closed and fixed with respect to the class they conform to, the fields they have, and the well-formedness constraints they must comply with. This hampers many MDE activities, like the reuse of model-related artefacts such as transformations, the opportunistic or dynamic combination of metamodels, or the dynamic reconfiguration of models. To alleviate this rigidity, we propose making model objects open so that they can acquire or drop so-called facets . These contribute with a type, fields and constraints to the objects holding them. Facets are defined by regular metamodels, hence being a lightweight extension of standard metamodelling. Facet metamodels may declare usage interfaces , as well as laws that govern the assignment of facets to objects (or classes). This article describes our proposal, reporting on a theory, analysis techniques, and an implementation. The benefits of the approach are validated on the basis of five case studies dealing with annotation models, transformation reuse, multi-view modelling, multi-level modelling, and language product lines.

Improving user productivity in modeling tools by explicitly modeling workflows

Software engineering aims to create software tools that allow people to solve particular problems in an easy and efficient way. In this regard, model-driven engineering (MDE) enables to generate software tools, by systematically modeling and transforming models. To do so, MDE relies on language workbenches: Integrated Development Environment for engineering modeling languages, designing models, executing them, and verifying them. However, the usability of these tools is far from efficient. Common MDE activities, such as creating a domain-specific language or developing a model transformation, are non-trivial and often require repetitive tasks. This results in unnecessary risings of development time. The goal of this paper is to increase the productivity of modelers in their daily activities by automating the tasks performed in current MDE tools. We propose an MDE-based solution where the user defines a reusable workflow that can be parameterized at run-time and executed. We have implemented workflows in the graphical modeling tool AToMPM. An empirical evaluation shows that the users’ productivity is significantly improved.

Automated modelling assistance by integrating heterogeneous information sources

Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) uses models as its main assets in the software development process. The structure of a model is described through a meta-model. Even though modelling and meta-modelling are recurrent activities in MDE and a vast amount of MDE tools exist nowadays, they are tasks typically performed in an unassisted way. Usually, these tools cannot extract useful knowledge available in heterogeneous information sources like XML, RDF, CSV or other models and meta-models.We propose an approach to provide modelling and meta-modelling assistance. The approach gathers heterogeneous information sources in various technological spaces, and represents them uniformly in a common data model. This enables their uniform querying, by means of an extensible mechanism, which can make use of services, e.g., for synonym search and word sense analysis. The query results can then be easily incorporated into the (meta-)model being built. The approach has been realized in the Extremo tool, developed as an Eclipse plugin.Extremo has been validated in the context of two domains – production systems and process modelling – taking into account a large and complex industrial standard for classification and product description. Further validation results indicate that the integration of Extremo in various modelling environments can be achieved with low effort, and that the tool is able to handle information from most existing technological spaces.

On submodels and submetamodels with their relation

Model-driven engineering (MDE) recognized software models as first-class objects with their own relationships and operations, up to constitute full structured model spaces. We focus on inclusion capacities through the concepts of submodel and submetamodel which contribute a lot to the structuring effort. Submodels and submetamodels underlie many MDE practices which require their precise characterization for plain control. A typical application is model management as offered by model repositories. On the basis of results on submodel inclusion we stated in a preceding paper, we concentrate on the special form of submodels which are submetamodels and their specific role in model space structuring. Pointing out that relating submodels and submetamodels is two ways, their respective inclusion hierarchies will be systematically characterized and symmetrically compared under the logical relationships of metamodel membership and model well-formedness. As a major result, it will be shown that submodel well-formedness w.r.t submetamodels closely relates to submodel invariance (a property which guarantees transitive structure preservation) applied at both levels. The uniform formalization offers algebraic grounding to better comprehension and control of model spaces which underlie MDE activities. At a much more practical level, reusable technology which takes advantage of established results will be offered.

Guest editorial to the special section on model transformation

Models have become essential for dealing with the numerous aspects involved in developing and maintaining complex IT systems. Models assist in capturing the relevant aspects of a system from a given perspective and at a precise level of abstraction. Model transformation represents a key activity in model-driven engineering by supporting the definition and implementation of the operations on models, which can provide a chain that enables the automated development of a system from its correspondingmodels. Furthermore, amodel transformation may also be considered a model in its own right, which presents opportunities for higher-order transformations, i.e., transformations that manipulate models representing other model transformations. There exist several approaches that support model transformation specification, implementation, and execution, which are beginning to be used by model engineers, endusers, and practitioners. However, model transformations need specialized support in several areas in order to realize their full potential. The challenges go beyond the need to have specific languages to represent model transformations; it is also necessary to understand foundational principles, such as the key concepts and operators supporting model transformation languages, their semantics, and their structuring