Engineering delta modeling languages

Abstract

Delta modeling is a modular, yet flexible approach to capture spatial and temporal variability by explicitly representing the differences between system variants or versions. The conceptual idea of delta modeling is language-independent. But, in order to apply delta modeling for a concrete language, so far, a delta language had to be manually developed on top of the base language leading to a large variety of heterogeneous language concepts. In this paper, we present a process that allows deriving a delta language from the grammar of a given base language. Our approach relies on an automatically generated language extension that can be manually adapted to meet domain-specific needs. We illustrate our approach using delta modeling on a textual variant of statecharts.

Software product line engineering and variability management: achievements and challenges

“…Delta modules specify changes to be applied to the core module to implement additional applications. Changes to the core model include the adding of additional code (as in FOP), but also removing and even the modification of code [54].…”

Software Product Lines

“…As in the development of single systems, testing in SPLE aims to execute the software to uncover the evidence of defects. One class of domain testing techniques includes techniques for developing reusable test cases in domain engineering and reusing and executing these test cases in application engineering [19]. In addition, domain testing aims to uncover evidence of defects in domain artifacts before these artifacts are reused in application engineering.…”

Systematically deriving domain-specific transformation languages

“…Similar to the systematic derivation presented here, is the approach presented in [13]. This approach derives delta languages from modeling languages.…”