Model transformations are key elements of model-driven engineering, where they are used to automate the manipulation of models. However, they are typed with respect to concrete source and target meta-models, making their reuse for other (even similar) meta-models challenging. To improve this situation, we propose capturing the typing requirements for reusing a transformation with other meta- models by the notion of typing requirements model (TRM). A TRM describes the prerequisites that a model transformation imposes on the source and target meta-models to obtain a correct typing. The key observation is that any meta-model pair that satisfies the TRM is a valid reuse context for the transformation at hand. A TRM is made of two domain requirement models (DRMs) describing the requirements for the source and target meta-models, and a compatibility model expressing dependencies between them. We define a notion of refinement between DRMs, and see meta-models as a special case of DRM. We provide a catalogue of valid refinements and describe how to automatically extract a TRM from an ATL transformation. The approach is supported by our tool TOTEM. We report on two experiments – based on transformations developed by third parties and meta-model mutation techniques – validating the correctness and completeness of our TRM extraction procedure and confirming the power of TRMs to encode variability and support flexible reuse.

Automated Reuse of Model Transformations through Typing Requirements Models

Davide Di Ruscio;Juri Di Rocco;Ludovico Iovino;Alfonso Pierantonio
2019-01-01

Abstract

Model transformations are key elements of model-driven engineering, where they are used to automate the manipulation of models. However, they are typed with respect to concrete source and target meta-models, making their reuse for other (even similar) meta-models challenging. To improve this situation, we propose capturing the typing requirements for reusing a transformation with other meta- models by the notion of typing requirements model (TRM). A TRM describes the prerequisites that a model transformation imposes on the source and target meta-models to obtain a correct typing. The key observation is that any meta-model pair that satisfies the TRM is a valid reuse context for the transformation at hand. A TRM is made of two domain requirement models (DRMs) describing the requirements for the source and target meta-models, and a compatibility model expressing dependencies between them. We define a notion of refinement between DRMs, and see meta-models as a special case of DRM. We provide a catalogue of valid refinements and describe how to automatically extract a TRM from an ATL transformation. The approach is supported by our tool TOTEM. We report on two experiments – based on transformations developed by third parties and meta-model mutation techniques – validating the correctness and completeness of our TRM extraction procedure and confirming the power of TRMs to encode variability and support flexible reuse.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11697/135647
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