Inter-DSL coordination support by combining megamodeling and model weaving

Abstract

Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) advocates the use of models at every step of the software development process. Within this context, a team of engineers collectively and collaboratively contribute to a large set of interrelated models. Even if the main focus can be on a single model (e.g. a class diagram model), related elements in other models (e.g. a requirement model) often have to be considered and/or accessed. Moreover, all the involved models do not necessarily conform to the same metamodel and thus may have been built using different independent Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs). Such a situation has already been frequently observed in many large-scale industrial deployments of MDE. Manually coordinating all the involved models, i.e. being able to both manage and use the links existing between them, can become a cumbersome and difficult task. As a proposal to solve this inter-DSL coordination issue, we introduce in this paper a generic and extensible inter-model traceability and navigation environment based on the complementary use of megamodeling and model weaving. We illustrate our solution with a concrete working example.

An Improved Model Facet Method to Support EA Alignment

“…Model weaving is a flexible and non-intrusive mapping technique that has been already experimented in the MDE field: "Model weaving operations are performed between two or more meta-models, or between models. They aim to specify the links, and their associated semantics, between elements of source and target models" [26]. Model weaving involves the creation of an independent model which refers to the models to weave and the links between their concepts.…”

“…Weaving between App and BPM meta-models Many weaving tools are developed with Eclipse platform Plug-ins based on the EMF technologies e.g. Atlas Model Weaver (AMW) [26] and Virtual EMF [27]. AMW includes a transformation mechanism with ATL 2 to create an automatic weaving.…”

On the Impact Significance of Metamodel Evolution in MDE.

“…• a metametamodel is a model that is its own reference model (i.e., it conforms to itself) [JB06]; instead, our GMM metamodel conforms to the Ecore metametamodel only (which is different from the GMM metamodel itself);…”

On the Composition and Reuse of Viewpoints across Architecture Frameworks

“…The basic megamodeling conceptual framework described above has been extended in many ways for different purposes. One recent extension proposes the use of megamodels in combination with weaving models [25] for coordinating sets of models. In that work, a megamodel represents all models involved in a given context and the various relationships between them, while weaving models are used to represent different kinds of fine-grained relationships between the elements contained in the models.…”

“…In that work, a megamodel represents all models involved in a given context and the various relationships between them, while weaving models are used to represent different kinds of fine-grained relationships between the elements contained in the models. The navigability and traceability extension in [25] had a strong impact on our work since it allows software architects to define relations between architectural models at two levels of abstraction: model-level and model element-level, thus promoting a definition of more accurate correspondences between the architectural elements involved in MEGAF.…”