Guest editorial to the special section on model tr

Authors: Zhenjiang Hu Juan de Lara

Publish Date: 2013/11/23

Volume: 14, Issue: 2, Pages: 533-535

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Abstract

Modeling is a key element in reducing the complexity of the development and maintenance of software systems Software engineering paradigms like modeldriven engineering MDE consider models as the primary elements in the software construction process In this setting model transformations are essential for elevating models from documentation elements to firstclass artifacts of the development Model transformation includes modeltotext transformation to generate code from models texttomodel transformations to parse textual representations to model representations model extraction to derive higherlevel models from legacy code and modeltomodel transformations to normalize weave optimize simulate and refactor models as well as to translate between modeling languagesModel transformation encompasses a variety of technical spaces including modelware grammarware and XMLware a variety of transformation representations including graphs trees and DAGs and a variety of transformation paradigms including rulebased graph transformation term rewriting and implementations in generalpurpose programming languagesThe study of model transformation includes foundations semantics structuring mechanisms and properties such as modularity and parameterization of transformations transformation languages techniques and tools An important goal of the field is the development of highlevel declarative model transformation languages providing model representations of transformations that are amenable to ’higherorder’ model transformation To achieve impact on software engineering practice tools and methodologies to integrate model transformation into existing development environments and processes is requiredThe International Conference on Model Transformation ICMT series started in 2008 as the premier forum for the presentation of contributions that advance the stateoftheart in the field of model transformation aims to bring together researchers from all areas of model transformationThis special section contains five papers whose shorter versions were presented at the 5th International Conference on Model Transformation ICMT 2012 which was held during May 28–29 2012 in Prague Czech Republic We selected 6 candidate papers out of 18 papers presented at ICMT 2012 for this special section based on the reviewers’ comments and scores and the quality of their presentations in the conference The authors of these papers submitted an extended version that was considered for publication in this special section The papers underwent a thorough peerreview process and all papers were refereed by at least three wellknown experts in the field At the end of the review process the following five papers were selected for this special sectionIn “Reuse in ModeltoModel Transformation Languages Are we there yet” by Schoenboeck Kusel Wimmer Kappel Retschitzegger and Schwinger the authors provide a systematic and very indepth survey of the existing transformation languages in regard to their supporting language mechanisms for the reuse of model transformation They give a nice taxonomy of the reuse mechanisms in model transformation combining three dimensions ie scope specificity and granularity Under this taxonomy they classified 15 mechanisms in total The main part of this paper is a very detailed description of these mechanisms For each mechanism they give the definition the illustrative examples the transformation languages supporting this mechanism and a further comparison of these languagesIn “Constraintdriven Modeling through Transformation” by Demuth López and Egyed the authors introduce a novel model transformation approach that relies on automatically derived model validation rules to specify the acceptable target models and informs the transformation engineer on the violating model segments This way the engineer can manually define the required operations to be executed on the target model in order to fulfill all derived validation rules The idea behind the approach is unique in the sense that it gives a complete tooling for automatically generating the instance level validation rules that are then fed into the ultrafast rule evaluation engine already developed by the authors There are three impressive large case studies explaining where transformation rules should be understood as constraints and showing the benefit of using constraintsIn “An Algorithm for Generating ModelSensitive Search Plans for Pattern Matching on EMF Models” by Varró Deckwerth Wieber and Schürr the authors address one of the crucial factors for the successful application of model transformations in practice the efficiency of pattern matching In particular the work describes a modelsensitive plan generation algorithm to speed up graph pattern matching The algorithm is based on dynamic programming collects statistical data from the underlying EMF model and uses the information for the optimization of the search planIn “SpecificationDriven Model Transformation Testing” by Guerra and Soeken the authors describe an advanced approach to automatic generation of input models and test oracles for model transformation testing The generation is based on a formal specification of transformation properties invariants pre and postconditions in PaMoMo After translating the properties in the specification into OCL constraints input models are generated by composing an OCL expression from the properties the input model should fulfill according to certain coverage criteria and then letting a constraint solver compute a valid input model that satisfies the specification OCL constraints the metamodel integrity constraints and the given OCL expression A prototype tool supports editing of PaMoMo specifications and automates the generation of input models and test scripts from them With three different case studies it is shown that more exhaustive coverage criteria result in test suites with higher vigilance for less complete specificationsIn “Enhancing Classic Transformation Languages to support MultiLevel Modeling” by Gerbig Atkinson and Tunjic the authors adapt concepts of model transformation to multilevel models Multilevel modeling is a generalization of the standard twolevel metamodeling setting where engineers are not forced to use one metalevel only but models can spawn an arbitrary number of them Multilevel modeling presents several benefits but poses certain challenges when used together with model manipulation languages In this paper the authors address the challenges related to modeltomodel transformations in a multilevel setting In particular they adapt the ATL transformation language for their work within the MelanEE multilevel modeling toolWe are grateful to the ICMT community for their excellent contributions to the ICMT conference and this special issue as well as to the members of the ICMT Steering Committee for their helpful advice We also thank the reviewers for their timely and accurate reviews Finally we would like to thank the SoSyM editorial office and in particular to Martin Schindler for their continuous and excellent support

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