Reasoning about Metamodeling with Formal Specifications and Automatic Proofs

Jackson, Ethan K.; Levendovszky, Tihamér; Balasubramanian, Daniel

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-24485-8_48

Cited by 39 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Anyhow, the specification of derived features can also be inconsistent, ambiguous or incomplete. In general, the mathematical precise validation of DSL specifications themselves have been attempted by only few approaches so far [31], and even these approaches lack a systematic validation process.…”

Section: Towards Validation Of Domain-specific Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, in the paper, we use a more permissive instance level formalism called partial snapshots (PS) as an additional input or output of DSL validation where certain language constraints are relaxed. During a typical validation run, such a PS While the underlying formalism of PSs is similar to existing approaches [31,35,50,52], we use them in a novel way to assist the DSL validation process, especially, for constructing validation proofs under specific assumptions. In our workflow, a PS can be generalised from a regular (fully specified) instance model by relaxing specific properties identified by the DSL developer, which can guide efficient validation in practically relevant cases.…”

Section: Partial Snapshotsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Model extensions using partial models The idea of using partial models, which are extended to valid models during verification also appears in [52,31,35]. These initial hints are provided manually to the verification process, while in our approach, these models are assembled from a previous (failed) verification run by adding partial snapshots of the spurious counterexamples or increase the level of approximation.…”

Section: Validation Of Ocl Enriched Metamodelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Formal validation of domain-specific languages with derived features and well-formedness constraints

et al. 2015

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Despite the wide range of existing tool support, constructing a design environment for a complex domain-specific language (DSL) is still a tedious task as the large number of derived features and well-formedness constraints complementing the domain metamodel necessitate special handling. Such derived features and constraints are frequently defined by declarative techniques (such graph patterns or OCL invariants).However, for complex domains, derived features and constraints can easily be formalized incorrectly resulting in inconsistent, incomplete or ambiguous DSL specifications. To detect such issues, we propose an automated mapping of EMF metamodels enriched with derived features and well-formedness constraints captured as graph queries in EMF-IncQuery or (a subset of) OCL invariants into an effectively propositional fragment of first-order logic which can be efficiently analyzed by back-end reasoners.On the conceptual level, the main added value of our encoding is (1) to transform graph patterns of the EMF-IncQuery framework into FOL and (2) to introduce approximations for complex language features (e.g. transitive closure or multiplicities) which are not expressible in FOL. On the practical level, we identify and address relevant challenges and scenarios for systematically validating DSL specifications. Our approach is supported by a tool and it will be illustrated on analyzing a DSL in the avionics domain. We also present initial performance experiments for the validation using Z3 and Alloy as back-end reasoners.

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Section: Towards Validation Of Domain-specific Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Partial Snapshotsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Validation Of Ocl Enriched Metamodelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Formal validation of domain-specific languages with derived features and well-formedness constraints

et al. 2015

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“…Similar to Alloy, the Formula tool is also designed to solve general constraint problems, but Formula uses a SMT solver as its back-end engine [15]. Thus, it has an advantage over Alloy's approach, which is a pure SAT-based approach when dealing with integer arithmetic.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploiting Attributed Type Graphs to Generate Metamodel Instances Using an SMT Solver

Monahan

Power

2013

2013 International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Software Engineering

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Abstract-In this paper we present an approach to generating instances of metamodels using a Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) solver as a back-end engine. Our goal is to automatically translate a metamodel and its invariants into SMT formulas which can be investigated for satisfiability by an external SMT solver, with each satisfying assignment for SMT formulas interpreted as an instance of the original metamodel. Our automated translation works by interpreting a metamodel as a bounded Attributed Type Graph with Inheritance (ATGI) and then deriving a finite universe of all bounded attribute graphs typed over this bounded ATGI. The graph acts as an intermediate representation which we then translate into SMT formulas. The full translation process, from metamodels to SMT formulas, and then from SMT instances back to metamodel instances, has been successfully automated in our tool, with the results showing the feasibility of this approach.

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“…Partial modeling [10,15,29] is a generic technique to introduce uncertainty into instance models. Semantically, one abstract partial model represents a range of possible instance models, which are called concretizations.…”

Section: Formalism Of 3-valued Partial Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Graph Constraint Evaluation over Partial Models by Constraint Rewriting

Semeráth

Varró

2017

Theory and Practice of Model Transformation

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Abstract. In the early stages of model driven development, models are frequently incomplete and partial. Partial models represent multiple possible concrete models, and thus, they are able to capture uncertainty and possible design decisions. When using models of a complex modeling language, several well-formedness constraints need to be continuously checked to highlight conceptual design flaws for the engineers in an early phase. While well-formedness constraints can be efficiently checked for (fully specified) concrete models, checking the same constraints over partial models is more challenging since, for instance, a currently valid constraint may be violated (or an invalid constraint may be respected) when refining a partial model into a concrete model. In this paper we propose a novel technique to evaluate well-formedness constraints on partial models in order to detect if (i) a concretization may potentially violate or (ii) any concretization will surely violate a well-formedness constraint to help engineers gradually to resolve uncertainty without violating well-formedness. For that purpose, we map the problem of constraint evaluation over partial models into a regular graph pattern matching problem over complete models by semantically equivalent rewrites of graph queries.

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Reasoning about Metamodeling with Formal Specifications and Automatic Proofs

Cited by 39 publications

References 17 publications

Formal validation of domain-specific languages with derived features and well-formedness constraints

Formal validation of domain-specific languages with derived features and well-formedness constraints

Exploiting Attributed Type Graphs to Generate Metamodel Instances Using an SMT Solver

Graph Constraint Evaluation over Partial Models by Constraint Rewriting

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