Synthesis of OCL Pre-conditions for Graph Transformation Rules

Abstract

Abstract. Graph transformation (GT) is being increasingly used in ModelDriven Engineering (MDE) to describe in-place transformations like animations and refactorings. For its practical use, rules are often complemented with OCL application conditions. The advancement of rule post-conditions into pre-conditions is a well-known problem in GT, but current techniques do not consider OCL. In this paper we provide an approach to advance post-conditions with arbitrary OCL expressions into pre-conditions. This presents benefits for the practical use of GT in MDE, as it allows: (i) to automatically derive pre-conditions from the meta-model integrity constraints, ensuring rule correctness, (ii) to derive pre-conditions from graph constraints with OCL expressions and (iii) to check applicability of rule sequences with OCL conditions.

Backwards reasoning for model transformations: Method and applications

“…This paper continues the work in [10], where the method was developed and applied to generate rule pre-conditions given some meta-model constraints. In this paper, we make a systematic analysis on the applicability of the method, and show techniques for its application to both in-place and exogenous transformations.…”

“…This section describes how to advance OCL post-conditions into preconditions. The method was originally described in [10], but for the sake self-containment, we include a description here as well.…”

“…The computation of the pre-condition from the post-condition [10] applies a set of textual replacement patterns on the OCL post-condition. These patterns capture the effect of an atomic graph update and modify the constraint accordingly, synthesizing the equivalent constraint before applying that update.…”

A survey of model transformation design patterns in practice

“…While some patterns are very specialised to certain kinds of transformation (eg., Lens, Text Templates) others are used more generally. Structure Preservation occurs widely across a range of transformation types (7 categories of transformation use it), although it particularly (40) GT (25) Refactoring (22) QVT-R (25) Bidirectional (18) UML-RSDS (15) Semantic map (11) TGG (10) Code generation (10) ETL (8) Analysis 7QVT-O (3) Abstraction 7Model Merging (5) Code generation (13) ATL (14) Refinement (13) QVT-O (4) Migration (6) GT 4QVT-R (6) Analysis 3UML-RSDS (1) Bidirectional (2) 5GT (8) Refinement 5QVT occurs in migration or refinement cases. Auxiliary Metamodel is a fundamental pattern which is also used widely (9 categories of transformation).…”

“…Semantic map ATL 2012 none [37] Struc. Preservation Migration ATL 2012 none [38] Recursive Descent Refinement QVT-R 2013 none [39] Auxiliary Meta* Refinement TGG, QVT-R 2009 none [40] Replace Abstract by Concrete syn. Refactoring GT 2010 none [41] Sim [186] Observer* Reactive none 2008 none [187] Visitor* Higher-order QVT-O 2012 none [189] Ent.…”