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Specification of Model Transformation and Weaving in Model Driven Engineering

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Specification of Model Transformation and Weaving in Model Driven Engineering Dipartimento di Informatica Universit`adi L’Aquila Via Vetoio, I-67100 L’Aquila, Italy http://www.di.univaq.it PH.D. THESIS IN COMPUTER SCIENCE XIX SPECIFICATION OF MODEL TRANSFORMATION AND WEAVING IN MODEL DRIVEN ENGINEERING Ph.D. Thesis of: Davide Di Ruscio Advisor: Prof. Alfonso Pierantonio Supervisor of the Ph.D. Program: Prof. Michele Flammini CICLO XIX c Davide Di Ruscio, 2007. All rights reserved ABSTRACT Last years witnessed an increasing intricacy of both software systems and technologies. A num- ber of platforms (e.g. CORBA, J2EE, .NET) have been introduced which often came in bundle with their own programming language (e.g. C++, Java, C#). This has made the software develop- ment process a difficult and expensive task. Model driven engineering (MDE) aims at preserving the investments in building complex software systems against constantly changing technology solutions, by advocating the raising of the abstraction level in system specification and increas- ing automation in system development. The concept of model driven engineering emerged as a generalization of Model Driven Architecture (MDA) proposed by the Object Management Group (OMG) in 2001 [95]. The MDA based software development starts by building a Platform In- dependent Model (PIM) of that system which is refined and transformed to one or more Plat- form Specific Models (PSMs). Then, the PSMs are transformed to code. In this scenario, model transformation plays a central role. Many languages and tools have been proposed to specify and execute transformation programs. In 2002 the Object Management Group (OMG) issued the Query/View/Transformation (QVT) request for proposal [93] to define a standard transformation language, whereas in the meanwhile, a number of model transformation approaches have been proposed both from academia and industry. However, since MDE approaches rely on complex model transformations, the problem of specifying them in a precise way has to be sufficiently achieved since the automation introduced by transformations gives place to additional require- ments on assuring the quality of mappings; correct conceptual designs may implant bugs into the applications if the automated transformations are erroneous [122]. Another central operation in MDE is model weaving intended as the operation for setting fine-grained relationships between models or metamodels and executing operations on them based on the semantics of the weaving associations specifically defined for the considered application domain [12]. This work proposes A4MT (ASMs for Model Transformation Specification) an approach based on Abstract State Machines (ASMs) [22] to support the formal specification and execution of model transformation and weaving. The choice of ASMs is motivated by the extensive use of this formal- ism in the specification and analysis of many software and hardware systems [1]. The formalism has a simple syntax that permits to write specifications that can be seen as “pseudocode over ab- stract data” and makes possible formal and executable specifications of model transformations enabling their design and validation. A4MT aims at formally specifying the behaviour of transfor- mations in order to produce a formal and implementation independent reference for what can and what can not happen during their execution. In this way, the transformation designers have the pos- sibility to check their basic design decisions against an accurate and executable high-level model of the transformation itself. A4MT has been validated in different applicative domains. Con- cerning the specification of model transformations, it has been used mainly to support the model driven development of Web applications and the compositional verification of middleware-based systems. With respect to model weaving, A4MT has been used to formally specify the semantics of weaving operators and the approach has been validated in two kind of applications: decou- pling of concerns in model driven development of Web applications and for software architecture modeling. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work is the synthesis of support and encouragement coming from different sources in various ways. First of all, I would like to thank Prof. Alfonso Pierantonio, without his support this thesis would not have been possible. Moreover, the friendly and supportive atmosphere inherent to the whole Computer Science Department of the University of L’Aquila contributed essentially to the final outcome of this work. I would like to thank the people from the ATLAS group of the Unversit´ede Nantes, since this PhD project profited a lot from our interesting discussions and the many new impulses I received from them. I also thank Prof. Jean B´ezivin and Prof. Antonio Vallecillo for carefully reading the preliminary version of this thesis and offering valuable corrections and suggestions. Apart from my colleagues, I would like to thank Marianna, my family and friends who have never lost faith in this long-term project. Their support and patience were fundamental in concluding this project. This work received financial support from the TecnoMarche S.c.a r.l. (Parco Scientifico e Tecno- logico delle Marche - Italy). ”...Rien ne se perd, rien ne se cre,´ tout se transforme...” Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract i Acknowledgments iii Table of Contents vii List of Figures ix List of Tables xi 1 Introduction 1 1.1 OutlineoftheThesis .............................. 3 1.2 ListofPublications .............................. ... 4 1.3 Funding Acknowledgements . ... 5 2 Basic Concepts 7 2.1 Model Driven Engineering . ... 7 2.2 ModelsandMeta-models . 8 2.3 Model Transformations . 10 2.3.1 Classification ................................ 10 2.3.2 Languages ................................. 12 2.4 ModelWeaving................................... 16 2.5 Conclusions..................................... 18 3 Abstract State Machines (ASMs) 19 3.1 Overview ...................................... 19 3.2 Mathematical definition of ASMs . 20 3.2.1 Vocabulary and states of ASMs . 20 3.2.2 Terms, variable assignment and formulae . ...... 21 3.2.3 Transition rules, consistent updates, firing of updates........... 23 3.3 The XASM Specification Language . 27 3.4 Conclusions..................................... 30 4 ASMs for Model Transformation Specification (A4MT) 31 4.1 Overview ...................................... 32 4.2 Model and Metamodel encoding . 32 4.3 Model Transformation Rules . 33 4.4 A4MTinthecontextofMOF2.0QVTRFP . 45 4.5 Comparing A4MT with other Approaches . ..... 46 4.6 Conclusions..................................... 49 5 A4MT Benchmark 53 5.1 A4MT for Model Driven Development of Web Applications . ......... 53 viii TABLE OF CONTENTS 5.1.1 Webile ................................... 54 5.1.2 DescribingPSMs.............................. 55 5.1.3 Model Transformations . 58 5.2 A4MT for Middleware Based System Development . ....... 62 5.2.1 Compositional Verification of Middleware-based SA . ......... 63 5.2.2 ProxyGeneration.............................. 65 5.2.3 Property Preserving Transformations . ...... 72 5.3 Giving Dynamic Semantics to DSLs through ASMs . ....... 72 5.3.1 Domain-Specific Languages and Models . 73 5.3.2 DSL Dynamic Semantics Specification with ASMs . ..... 75 5.3.3 TheAMMAFramework .......................... 75 5.3.4 ExtendingAMMAwithASMs. 76 5.3.5 DynamicSemanticsofATL . 77 5.4 Conclusions..................................... 81 6 A4MT-based Model Weaving 83 6.1 Weaving Concerns of Web Applications . ...... 83 6.1.1 Dealing with Web Application Concerns . 84 6.1.2 Concern Specifications . 87 6.1.3 Weaving Specification . 90 6.1.4 Target Model Generations . 92 6.2 Weaving Software Architecture Models . ....... 100 6.2.1 Modeling Software Architectures . 100 6.2.2 Duallyprofile................................ 102 6.2.3 ExtendingDually.............................. 103 6.2.4 Using Dually for Designing Fault-tolerant systems . .......... 106 6.3 Conclusions..................................... 108 7 Conclusions 109 References 111 LIST OF FIGURES 2.1 The four layer meta-modeling architecture . .......... 8 2.2 MDA based development Process . ... 9 2.3 Basic Concepts of Model Transformation . ....... 10 2.4 QVTArchitecture................................. 12 2.5 Fragment of a declarative ATL transformation . .......... 14 2.6 WeavingOperation ................................ 17 3.1 SubasmCall..................................... 28 3.2 FunctionCall .................................... 29 4.1 Model Transformation through A4MT . ..... 32 4.2 Algebraic encoding of a sample UML metamodel . ....... 33 4.3 Algebraic encoding fragment of a Sample UML model . ........ 34 4.4 SampleRDBMSmetamodel . 35 4.5 SampleSourceUMLModel ..... ...... ..... ...... ..... 37 4.6 SampleTargetRDBMSModel . 38 5.1 A fragment of an academic site . 54 5.2 Different Views of the MVC pattern . ..... 56 5.3 Conallen’s View-Controller description . .......... 57 5.4 XDWModeldescription .. ..... ...... ..... ...... ..... 57 5.5 A model encoded in an algebra . 59 5.6 An abstract representation of a Webile model . ......... 61 5.7 a) ATM application; b) Z property ......................... 64 5.8 Component Behavior Descriptions . ...... 64 5.9 Architectural Refinement . 65 5.10DetailingSA .................................... 66 5.11 Components Relabelling . 67 5.12 The transformation process . ...... 67 5.13 TMStateMachinemodels . 68 5.14 SourceMetamodel ................................ 69 5.15 TargetMetamodel................................ 70 5.16 PresentStateofAMMA
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