Departamento de Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores Model Morphisms (MoMo) to Enable Language Independent Information Models and Interoperable Business Networks By Filipe André Sobral Correia MSc. Dissertation presented at Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia of Universidade Nova de Lisboa to obtain the Master degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering, held under the guidance of Doctor Ricardo Luís Rosa Jardim-Gonçalves Lisboa September 2010 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank all those who in some way contributed and supported me during the realisation of my course and this dissertation. To my parents, brother and sister in-law who supported me from the beginning and throughout all these long years and never gave up on believing in me. To Lua, my moonlight which guided me in these long seven years with many dark nights. Thank you for always being there and making me believing in myself. To my advisor Doctor Ricardo Gonçalves for believing in my capabilities and giving me the honour of his advices, the time devoted to assist me and the assertive guidance towards the completion of this dissertation. To all my colleagues at GRIS, especially to Carlos Agostinho, João Sarraipa and Fernando Ferreira, who took me as family and supported me from very closely. Finally, a very special thanks to all my friends who shared my worries throughout these long past years especially to Luís Martins, Tiago Gaspar and Fábio Coelho. I will never forget those RedBull-powered nights at the University! iii iv ABSTRACT With the event of globalisation, the opportunities for collaboration became more evident with the effect of enlarging business networks. In such conditions, a key for enterprise success is a reliable communication with all the partners. Therefore, organisations have been searching for flexible integrated environments to better manage their services and product life cycle, where their software applications could be easily integrated independently of the platform in use. However, with so many different information models and implementation standards being used, interoperability problems arise. Moreover, organisations are themselves at different technological maturity levels, and the solution that might be good for one, can be too advanced for another, or vice-versa. This dissertation responds to the above needs, proposing a high level meta-model to be used at the entire business network, enabling to abstract individual models from their specificities and increasing language independency and interoperability, while keeping all the enterprise legacy software‟s integrity intact. The strategy presented allows an incremental mapping construction, to achieve a gradual integration. To accomplish this, the author proposes Model Driven Architecture (MDA) based technologies for the development of traceable transformations and execution of automatic Model Morphisms. RESUMO Com a globalização, as oportunidades de colaboração tornaram-se ainda mais evidentes com o aumento das redes de negócios. Nessas condições, uma chave para o sucesso empresarial é a comunicação confiável com todos os parceiros. Assim, as organizações têm procurado por ambientes integrados flexíveis de forma a melhor gerirem os seus serviços e ciclos de vida de produto, e onde possam integrar facilmente o seu software independentemente da plataforma em uso. No entanto, com tantos diferentes modelos de informação e normas standard em uso, surgem problemas de interoperabilidade. Além disso, as organizações estão em diferentes níveis de maturidade tecnológica, e uma solução que poderia ser ideal para uma, pode ser demasiado avançada para outra, ou vice-versa. Esta dissertação responde às necessidades acima, propondo um meta-modelo de alto nível usado por uma rede de empresas, permitindo a abstracção dos modelos das suas especificidades, aumentando a independência de linguagem e interoperabilidade, enquanto mantém a integridade de todo o software de uma empresa intacto. A estratégia apresentada utiliza um mapeamento incremental de forma a permitir v uma integração gradual. Para isto, o autor propõe o uso de tecnologias baseadas em MDA para o desenvolvimento de morfismos rastreáveis de modelos. vi TABLE OF ACRONYMS AP Application Protocol ARM Application Reference Model ASCII American Standard Code for Information Interchange ATL ATLAS Transformation Language BDA Behavioural Digital Aircraft CAD Computer-Aided Design CIM Computer Independent Model DDL Data Definition Language EEP Eurostep EXPRESS Parser EE Extended Enterprise EMF Eclipse Modelling Framework EI Enterprise Interoperability FP7 Seventh Framework Programme GRIS Group for Research in Interoperability of Systems ICT Information and Communication Technology IDE Integrated Development Environments IEC International Electrotechnical Commission ISO International Organisation for Standardization (http://www.iso.org) IT Information Technology ITU International Telecommunication Union MDA Model Driven Architecture MDD Model Driven Development MDE Model Driven Engineering MDI Model Driven Interoperability MOF Meta Object Facility MoMo Model Morphism MRS MoMo Recommendation System NIST National Institute of Standards and Technologies vii OCL Object Constraint Language OMG Object Management Group (http://www.omg.org) OWL Web Ontology Language P2P Peer to Peer PDM Product Data Management PIM Platform Independent Model PLC Product Life Cycle PLCS Product Life Cycle Support PLM Product Lifecycle Management PSM Platform Specific Model QVT Query/View/Transformation Language SC Supply Chain SME Small and Medium Enterprise SQL Structured Query Language STEP Standard for the Exchange of Product Data SUS System Under Study TTCN The Tree and Tabular Combined Notation UML Unified Modelling Language VE Virtual Enterprise VO Virtual Organisation W3C World Wide Web XMI XML Metadata Interchange XML Extensible Markup Language XSD XML Schema Definition viii TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Research Framework and Motivation .................................................................................. 5 1.2. Research Method ................................................................................................................ 7 1.3. Research Problem and Question(s) .................................................................................... 10 1.4. Hypothesis ......................................................................................................................... 10 1.5. Dissertation Outline ........................................................................................................... 10 2. Information Modelling and Languages ......................................................................................... 13 2.1. Models and Meta-Models .................................................................................................. 13 2.2. Modelling Paradigms ......................................................................................................... 16 2.3. Data Standards .................................................................................................................. 18 2.3.1. STEP ........................................................................................................................... 19 2.4. Modelling Languages ......................................................................................................... 20 2.4.1. Unified Modelling Language ....................................................................................... 20 2.4.2. EXPRESS ..................................................................................................................... 22 2.4.3. Others ........................................................................................................................ 24 3. Model Morphisms ........................................................................................................................ 25 3.1. Model Non-Altering Morphisms......................................................................................... 25 3.2. Model Altering Morphisms ................................................................................................ 26 3.2.1. Model Transformation ............................................................................................... 27 3.2.2. Model Merging .......................................................................................................... 27 3.3. Model Morphism Ontology ................................................................................................ 28 3.4. Semantic properties of Model Morphisms ......................................................................... 29 4. Model Driven Interoperability Foundations .................................................................................. 33 4.1. Model Driven Interoperability Method .............................................................................. 33 4.2. Model Driven Architecture ................................................................................................ 35 4.2.1. MDA Standards .......................................................................................................... 37 4.3. Executable Transformation Languages ............................................................................... 39 5. Morphisms for Model and Language Independency in Multi-Sized