The development and evolution of an advanced modeling environment for a Domain-Specific Modeling Language (DSML) is a tedious task, which becomes recurrent with the increasing number of DSMLs involved in the development and management of complex software-intensive systems. Recent efforts in language workbenches result in advanced frameworks that automatically provide syntactic tooling such as advanced editors. However, defining the execution semantics of languages and their tooling remains mostly hand crafted. Similarly to editors that share code completion or syntax highlighting, the development of advanced debuggers, animators, and others execution analysis tools shares common facilities, which should be reused among various DSMLs. In this tool demonstration paper, we present the execution framework offered by the GEMOC studio, an Eclipse-based language and modeling workbench. The framework provides a generic interface to plug in different execution engines associated to their specific metalanguages used to define the discrete-event operational semantics of DSMLs. It also integrates generic runtime services that are shared among the approaches used to implement the execution semantics, such as graphical animation or omniscient debugging.

When defining a domain-specific modeling language (DSML), the two key components that have to be specified are its syntax and semantics. For specifying a modeling languages' abstract syntax, metamodels are the standard means. MOF provides a standardized, well established, and widely accepted metamodeling language enabling the definition of metamodels and the generation of accompanying modeling facilities. However, no such standard means exist for specifying the behavioral semantics of a DSML. This hampers the efficient development of model execution facilities, such as debugging, simulation, and verification. To overcome this limitation, we propose to integrate fUML with MOF to enable the specification of the behavioral semantics for DSMLs in terms of fUML activities. We discuss alternatives how this integration can be achieved and show by-example how to specify the semantics of a DSML using fUML. To reuse existing runtime infrastructures, we further demonstrate the usage of external libraries in fUML-based specifications.

International audienceExecutable Domain-Specific Modeling Languages (xDSMLs) enable the application of early dynamic verification and validation (V&V) techniques for behavioral models. At the core of such techniques, execution traces are used to represent the evolution of models during their execution. In order to construct execution traces for any xDSML, generic trace metamodels can be used. Yet, regarding trace manipulations, generic trace metamodels lack efficiency in time because of their sequential structure, efficiency in memory because they capture superfluous data, and usability because of their conceptual gap with the considered xDSML. Our contribution is a novel generative approach that defines a multidimensional and domain-specific trace metamodel enabling the construction and manipulation of execution traces for models conforming to a given xDSML. Efficiency in time is improved by providing a variety of navigation paths within traces, while usability and memory are improved by narrowing the scope of trace metamodels to fit the considered xDSML. We evaluated our approach by generating a trace metamodel for fUML and using it for semantic differencing, which is an important V&V technique in the realm of model evolution. Results show a significant performance improvement and simplification of the semantic differencing rules as compared to the usage of a generic trace metamodel

No abstract

No abstract

Model Driven Engineering is a development paradigm that uses models instead of code as primary development artifacts. In this paper, we focus on executable models, which are used to abstract the behavior of systems for the purpose of verifying and validating (V&V) a system's properties. Model execution tracing (i.e., obtaining and analyzing traces of model executions) is an important enabler for many V&V techniques including testing, model checking, and system comprehension. This may explain the increase in the number of proposed approaches on tracing model executions in the last years. Despite the increased attention, there is currently no clear understanding of the state of the art in this research field, making it difficult to identify research gaps and opportunities. The goal of this paper is to survey and classify existing work on model execution tracing, and identify promising future research directions. To achieve this, we conducted a systematic mapping study where we examined 64 primary studies out of 645 found publications. We found that the majority of model execution tracing approaches has been developed for the purpose of testing and dynamic analysis. Furthermore, most approaches target specific

Executable Domain-Specific Modeling Languages (xDSMLs) open many possibilities for performing early verification and validation (V&V) of systems. Dynamic V&V approaches rely on execution traces, which represent the evolution of models during their execution. In order to construct traces, generic trace metamodels can be used. Yet, regarding trace manipulations, they lack both efficiency because of their sequential structure, and usability because of their gap to the xDSML. Our contribution is a generative approach that defines a rich and domain-specific trace metamodel enabling the construction of execution traces for models conforming to a given xDSML. Efficiency is increased by providing a variety of navigation paths within traces, while usability is improved by narrowing the concepts of the trace metamodel to fit the considered xDSML. We evaluated our approach by generating a trace metamodel for fUML and using it for semantic differencing, which is an important V&V activity in the realm of model evolution. Results show a significant performance improvement and simplification of the semantic differencing rules as compared to the usage of a generic trace metamodel.

AutomationML (AML) is an emerging standard in the automation domain to represent and exchange artifacts between heterogeneous engineering tools used in different disciplines, such as mechanical and electrical engineering. The Systems Modeling Language (SysML) is a modeling standard influenced by software modeling languages, such as UML, typically adopted in the early phases of engineering processes. This paper investigates commonalities and differences of the structural modeling parts of AML (CAEX) and SysML (block diagrams) in support of establishing tool-independent interoperability. This support for cross-disciplinary modeling is facilitated by a bridge between AML and SysML built on model-driven interoperability techniques. We demonstrate the interoperability between AML and SysML with a case study concerning a lab-sized production system.