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Supporting the Co-evolution of Metamodels and Constraints through Incremental Constraint Management

  • Conference paper
Model-Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MODELS 2013)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 8107))

Abstract

Design models must abide by constraints that can come from diverse sources, like metamodels, requirements, or the problem domain. Modelers intent to live by these constraints and thus desire automated mechanism that provide instant feedback on constraint violations. However, typical approaches assume that constraints do not evolve over time, which, unfortunately, is becoming increasingly unrealistic. For example, the co-evolution of metamodels and models requires corresponding constraints to be co-evolved continuously. This demands efficient constraint adaptation mechanisms to ensure that validated constraints are up-to-date. This paper presents an approach based on constraint templates that tackles this evolution scenario by automatically updating constraints. We developed the Cross-Layer Modeler (XLM) approach which relies on incremental consistency-checking. As a case study, we performed evolutions of the UML-metamodel and 21 design models. Our approach is sound and the empirical evaluation shows that it is near instant and scales with increasing model sizes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Systems Engineering and Automation, Johannes Kepler University (JKU), Linz, Austria

    Andreas Demuth, Roberto E. Lopez-Herrejon & Alexander Egyed

Authors
  1. Andreas Demuth
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  2. Roberto E. Lopez-Herrejon
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  3. Alexander Egyed
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Departamento de Informática, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2829-516, Caparica, Portugal

    Ana Moreira

  2. Institut für Mathematik, fortiss / Technische Universität München, Guerickestraße 25, 80805, München, Germany

    Bernhard Schätz

  3. Department of Computer Science, University of Alabama, Box 870290, 35487-0290, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA

    Jeff Gray

  4. ETSI Informática, Universidad de Málaga, Campus de Teatinos, Bulevar Louis Pasteur 35, 29071, Málaga, Spain

    Antonio Vallecillo

  5. School of Computing and Information Sciences, College of Engineering and Computing, Florida International University, 33199, Miami, FL, USA

    Peter Clarke

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Demuth, A., Lopez-Herrejon, R.E., Egyed, A. (2013). Supporting the Co-evolution of Metamodels and Constraints through Incremental Constraint Management. In: Moreira, A., Schätz, B., Gray, J., Vallecillo, A., Clarke, P. (eds) Model-Driven Engineering Languages and Systems. MODELS 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8107. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41533-3_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41533-3_18

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-41532-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-41533-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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