Reverse Engineering of Model Transformations for Reusability

Abstract

Esta es la versión de autor de la comunicación de congreso publicada en: This is an author produced version of a paper published in: Abstract. Reuse techniques are key for the industrial adoption of ModelDriven Engineering (MDE). However, while reusability has been successfully applied to programming languages, its use is scarce in MDE and, in particular, in model transformations.In previous works, we developed an approach that enables the reuse of model transformations for different meta-models. This is achieved by defining reusable components that encapsulate a generic transformation template and expose an interface called concept declaring the structural requirements that any meta-model using the component should fulfil.Binding the concept to one of such meta-models induces an adaptation of the template, which becomes applicable to the meta-model. To facilitate reuse, concepts need to be concise, reflecting only the minimal set of requirements demanded by the transformation. In this paper, we automate the reverse engineering of existing transformations into reusable transformation components. To make a transformation reusable, we use the information obtained from its static analysis to derive a concept that is minimal with respect to the transformation and maximizes its reuse opportunities, and then evolve the transformation accordingly. The paper describes a prototype implementation and an evaluation using transformations from the ATL zoo.

Comparing and classifying model transformation reuse approaches across metamodels

“…In this case, rt was developed with the intention of being reused. Hence, depending on the reuse approach, the MT needs to be packaged as a component [62], as a pattern [15], or the metamodel the MT is defined on may need to be sliced [63]. All other kinds of reuse are considered opportunistic.…”

“…It can be a metamodel declaring the necessary classes and features in the context of reuse [15,21,62,65], a logic-based specification stating the constraints that a metamodel should fulfill to ensure a correct MT reuse [77], or a model describing metamodel requirements using a domain-specific language (DSL) [42,45]. Sometimes, this reuse interface can be (semi-)automatically derived from the MT [42,45,63,77]. While the above-mentioned interface kinds yield a black-box approach to reuse, the interface for reuse in whitebox approaches is the reusable transformation or an abstraction of it [15,74].…”

“…[55]. A specific implementation for ATL, with an expressive binding DSL [62,63] and facilities to refactor a MT to obtain a simpler concept, is supported by the bentō tool 3 .…”

Advanced and efficient execution trace management for executable domain-specific modeling languages

“…Computing static metamodel footprints has been extensively studied, and approaches exist for many languages, such as for Kermeta [37,38], ATL [11,59], and OCL [11]. As we discuss in Sect.…”

Reusable Model Transformation Components with bentō

“…A summary of the concrete demo presented at the conference is available online 1 . The concepts behind the component model underlying bentō have been reported elsewhere [4,5]. Nevertheless, the tool has been improved since its first versions with new features such as support for in-place transformations, validation, integration with a static analyser [6] 2 , and a REST-based repository to store and retrieve components.…”