The VIATRA (VIsual Automated model TRAnsformations)

The design process of complex systems requires a precise checking of the functional and dependability attributes of the target design. The growing complexity of systems necessitates the use of formal methods, as the exhaustiveness of checks performed by the traditional simulation and testing is insu cient. For this reason, the mathematical models of various formal veriÿcation tools are automatically derived from UML-diagrams of the model by mathematical transformations guaranteeing a complete consistency between the target design and the models of veriÿcation and validation tools. In the current paper, a general framework for an automated model transformation system is presented. The method starts from a uniform visual description and a formal proof concept of the particular transformations by integrating the powerful computational paradigm of graph transformation, planner algorithms of artiÿcial intelligence, and various concepts of computer engineering.

Abstract. The Model Driven Architecture necessitates not only the application of software engineering disciplines to the specification of modeling languages (language-ware) but also to design inter and intralanguage model transformations (transformation-ware). Although many model transformation approaches exist, their focus is almost exclusively put on functional correctness and intuitive description language while the importance of engineering issues such as reusability, maintainability, performance or compactness are neglected. To tackle these problems following the MDA philosophy, we argue in the paper that model transformations should also be regarded as models (i.e., as data). More specifically, we demonstrate (i) how generic transformations can provide a very compact description of certain transformation problems and (ii) how meta-transformations can be designed that yield efficient transformations as their output model. Keywords: model transformation, metamodeling, meta-transformation, generic transformation. Towards Model Transformation Engineering in MDAMDA and language engineering. Recently, the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) of the Object Management Group (OMG) has become a dominant trend in software engineering. The main idea of the MDA framework is the use of models during the entire system design cycle. At first, the central business logic functionality on the target system is captured by the so-called platform-independent model (PIM). Information on the target software platform is added in a later phase when mapping PIMs into platform-specific models (PSMs). Finally, the entire source code of the target application can be generated automatically.A key factor in the success of the MDA is thus the development of industrialstrength models in various modeling languages. Several metamodeling approaches [3,6,10,24] have been flourishing to provide solid foundations for language engineering (or language-ware) to allow systems engineers to design a language for their own domain. As being the standard and visual object-oriented modeling language, UML obviously plays a key role also in language design.This work was partially supported by the Hungarian National Scientific Foundation Grant (OTKA 038027). Many model transformation approaches exist (including the official proposals submitted to the QVT RFP and overviewed in [12]). An "ultimate debate" that separates these approaches is about the way of specifying transformations: declarative approaches (like [2,13,16]) define a relation between elements of the source and target modeling language while operational approaches (such as [20,26,14,25,23]) define rules to describe what steps are required to derive the target model from a given source model. Mixed approaches (see [21]) typically use declarative relations first which are manually refined into operational rules later on. In general, declarative approaches tend to be more intuitive for software engineers (i.e., it is easier to write and understand declarative transformations) while it is easier to automa...

As UML 2.0 is evolving into a family of languages with individually specified semantics, there is an increasing need for automated and provenly correct model transformations that (i) assure the integration of local views (different diagrams) of the system into a consistent global view, and, (ii) provide a well-founded mapping from UML models to different semantic domains (Petri nets, Kripke automaton, process algebras, etc.) for formal analysis purposes as foreseen, for instance, in submissions for the OMG RFP for Schedulability, Performance and Time. However, such transformations into different semantic domains typically require the deep understanding of the underlying mathematics, which hinders the use of formal specification techniques in industrial applications. In the paper, we propose a multilevel metamodeling technique with precise static and dynamic semantics (based on a refinement calculus and graph transformation) where the structure and operational semantics of mathematical models can be defined in a UML notation without cumbersome mathematical formulae.

Abstract. The work in this paper1 is devoted to the definition of a dependability modeling and model based evaluation approach based on UML models. It is to be used in the early phases of the system design to capture system dependability attributes like reliability and availability, thus providing guidelines for the choice among different architectural and design solutions. We show how structural UML diagrams can be processed to filter out the dependability related information and how a system-wide dependability model is constructed. Due to the modular construction, this model can be refined later as more detailed information becomes available. We discuss the model refinement based on the General Resource Model, an extension of UML. We show that the dependability model can be constructed automatically by using graph transformation techniques.