Realizing Model Transformation Chain interoperability

  • Authors:

  • Andrés Yie;Rubby Casallas;Dirk Deridder;Dennis Wagelaar

  • Affiliations:

  • Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia;Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia;Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussel, Belgium;Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussel, Belgium

  • Venue:
  • Software and Systems Modeling (SoSyM)
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

A single Model Transformation Chain (MTC) takes a high-level input model rooted in the problem domain and through one or more transformation steps produces a low-level output model rooted in the solution domain. To build a single "almighty" MTC that is in charge of every design, implementation and specific platform concern is a complex task. Instead, we can use several smaller MTCs that are easier to develop and maintain, because each MTC is independently developed focusing on a specific concern. However, the MTCs must interoperate to produce complete applications; this inherently creates dependencies between them, because each MTC generates a part of the final low-level model. In this paper, we propose an external and explicit mechanism to track dependencies between the MTCs (i.e., the MTCs are oblivious to the mechanism), which is used to automatically derive correspondence relationships between the final models generated by each MTC. The contribution of our mechanism is the reduction of complexity of building interoperable MTCs because the derived correspondences are resolved after the transformations execution, in the solution domain where the semantics of every concept is well-defined. The resolution process consists of (1) checking the consistency between the models, (2) producing communication bridges or (3) guiding the composition of the models. This paper presents three case studies to illustrate the derivation and resolution of correspondence relationships through the MTCs.