Rule-based update transformations and their application to model refactorings

Abstract

A rule-based update transformation is a model transformation where a single model is transformed in place. A model refactoring is a model transformation that improves the design described in the model. A refactoring should only affect a previously chosen subset of the original model. In this paper, we discuss how to define and execute model refactorings as rule-based transformations in the context of the UML and MOF standards. We also present an experimental tool to execute this kind of transformation.

Automated traceability analysis for UML model refinements

“…Some of the relevant articles [41,42] classify refinement at a very low level (e.g., addition and deletion of a model element); others only take into account a few simple refinements which are not organized in a systematic way [14,21]. Another body of work only focuses on refactoring (a special type of refinement), in particular those defined by Fowler [18].…”

A Catalogue of Refactorings for Model-to-Model Transformations.

“…The application of this formalism comes with the additional benefit of formal analysis possibilities of dependencies between different refactorings [MTR07]. Besides graph transformations, also other transformation formalisms have been used for implementing model refactorings, e.g., [Por05], [ZLG05], [KPPR07] to name just a few. Mentioned works have in common that they are focused on implementing refactorings with model transformation formalisms, but not on refactoring model transformations themselves.…”

Viewpoint Co-evolution through Coarse-Grained Changes and Coupled Transformations

“…The work in [35] defined a set of UML refactorings on the conceptual level by expressing pre-and post-conditions in OCL, and [2] presented a refactoring browser for UML supporting the automatic execution of pre-defined UML refactorings. While these two approaches focus on predefined refactorings only, other approaches [21,28,38] allow the introduction of userdefined refactorings by using dedicated textual languages. A similar idea is followed in [1,24] but instead of textual languages, graph transformations are used to describe refactorings.…”