A Tridimensional Approach for Studying the Formal Verification of Model Transformations

Abstract

In Model Driven Engineering (MDE), models are first-class citizens, and model transformation is MDE's "heart and soul" [1]. Since model transformations are executed for a family of conforming models, their validity becomes a crucial issue. This paper proposes to explore the question of the formal verification of model transformation properties through a tri-dimensional approach: the transformation involved, the properties of interest addressed, and the formal verification techniques used to establish the properties. This work allows a better understanding of the expected properties for a particular transformation, and facilitates the identification of the suitable tools and techniques for enabling their verification.

Formal Verification Techniques for Model Transformations: A Tridimensional Classification .

“…This paper extends a preliminary study that appeared more than two years ago in [4] with the following points:…”

“…As a consequence, we seek for coverage of each dimension that we try to illustrate with at least one contribution. This paper is neither a systematic literature survey (Slr, as understood by Kitchenbaum [60,61]) for the reasons we mentioned earlier, nor a study aiming at completeness, since the field evolves fast (as illustrated by the fact that the number of contributions doubled since our original version [4]) and we only wanted to illustrate the diversity and richness of our classification. However, this paper can serve the needs of two different audiences as a side-effect of its main purpose: for newcommers, it provides a tutorial introduction to the field of formal verification of model transformations, by precisely identifying the main notions at play, and proposing an analysis grid for understanding its many variation points; it nevertheless does not replace good introductory material for each specific dimension.…”

“…• and most importantly, the integration of many contributions that were initially missing in [4] due to space limitations, or that appeared since the first paper was published.…”

Testing M2T/T2M Transformations

“…As a response, a plethora of approaches ranging from lightweight certification to full verification have been proposed to reason about different kinds of properties of M2M transformations [1,26]. However, as mentioned before, transformations involving text on one side have not been extensively studied.…”

“…Much effort has been put into the establishment of model-to-model (M2M) transformation testing techniques in the past years [1,26]. Several approaches have been developed for defining contracts for M2M transformations that act as specifications for model transformation implementations [5,12], as oracle functions to validate the output of transformations [12,13], and as drivers for generating test cases [13].…”