Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Dynamic hierarchical mega models: comprehensive traceability and its efficient maintenance

  • Theme Section
  • Published:
Software & Systems Modeling Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In the world of model-driven engineering (MDE) support for traceability and maintenance of traceability information is essential. On the one hand, classical traceability approaches for MDE address this need by supporting automated creation of traceability information on the model element level. On the other hand, global model management approaches manually capture traceability information on the model level. However, there is currently no approach that supports comprehensive traceability, comprising traceability information on both levels, and efficient maintenance of traceability information, which requires a high-degree of automation and scalability. In this article, we present a comprehensive traceability approach that combines classical traceability approaches for MDE and global model management in form of dynamic hierarchical mega models. We further integrate efficient maintenance of traceability information based on top of dynamic hierarchical mega models. The proposed approach is further outlined by using an industrial case study and by presenting an implementation of the concepts in form of a prototype.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Aizenbud-Reshef N., Nolan B.T., Rubin J., Shaham-Gafni Y.: Model traceability. IBM Syst. J. 45(3), 515–526 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Aizenbud-Reshef, N., Paige, R.F., Rubin, J., Shaham-Gafni, Y., Kolovos, D.S.: Operational semantics for traceability. In: ECMDA-TW’05: Proceedings of 1st Workshop on Traceability, Nurnberg, Germany, pp. 7–14. SINTEF, 7–10 November 2005

  3. Aleksy, M., Hildenbrand, T., Obergfell, C., Schwind, M.: A pragmatic approach to traceability in model-driven development. In: Heinzl, A., Appelrath, H.-J., Sinz, E.J. (eds.) PRIMIUM. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 328. CEUR-WS.org (2008)

  4. Allilaire F., Bézivin J., Brunelière H., Jouault F.: Global model management in Eclipse GMT/AM3. In: Proceedings of the Eclipse Technology eXchange Workshop (eTX) at ECOOP’06 (2006)

  5. Asuncion, H.U.: Towards practical software traceability. In: ICSE Companion ’08: Companion of the 30th International Conference on Software Engineering, pp. 1023–1026. ACM, New York (2008)

  6. Asuncion, H.U., François, F., Taylor, R.N.: An end-to-end industrial software traceability tool. In: ESEC-FSE ’07: Proceedings of the the 6th Joint Meeting of the European Software Engineering Conference and the ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on The Foundations of Software Engineering, pp. 115–124. ACM, New York (2007)

  7. Barbero, M., Fabro, M.D.D., Bézivin, J.: Traceability and provenance issues in global model management. In: Oldevik, J., Olsen, G.K., Neple, T. (eds.) ECMDA-TW’07: Proceedings of 3rd Workshop on Traceability, Haifa, Israel, pp. 47–55, June 2007. SINTEF (2007)

  8. Berg, K., Bishop, J., Muthig, D.: Tracing software product line variability: from problem to solution space. In: SAICSIT ’05: Proceedings of the 2005 Annual Research Conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists on IT Research in Developing Countries, pp. 182–191. South African Institute for Computer Scientists and Information Technologists, Republic of South Africa (2005)

  9. Bézivin, J., Jouault, F., Rosenthal, P., Valduriez, P.: Modeling in the large and modeling in the small. In: Model Driven Architecture. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), vol. 3599, pp. 33–46. Springer, Berlin (2005)

  10. Bézivin, J., Jouault, F., Valduriez, P.: On the need for megamodels. In: Proceedings of the OOPSLA/GPCE: Best Practices for Model-Driven Software Development workshop, 19th Annual ACM Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (2004)

  11. Dömges R., Pohl K.: Adapting traceability to project-SP. Commun. ACM 41(12), 54–62 (1998)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Drivalos, N., Kolovos, D.S., Paige, R.F., Fernandes, K.: Engineering a DSL for software traceability. In: First International Conference, SLE 2008, Toulouse, France. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), vol. 5452, pp. 151–167, 29–30 September 2009. Springer, Berlin (2009)

  13. Drivalos, N., Paige, R.F., Fernandes, K., Kolovos, D.S.: Towards rigorously defined model-to-model traceability. In: ECMDA-TW’08: Proceedings of 4th Workshop on Traceability, Berlin, Germany. SINTEF, 9–12 June 2008

  14. Egyed, A.: Instant consistency checking for the UML. In: ICSE ’06: Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Software Engineering, pp. 381–390. ACM, New York (2006)

  15. Egyed, A.: Fixing inconsistencies in UML design models. In: Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pp. 292–301, May 2007. IEEE Computer Society Press, Minneapolis (2007)

  16. Falleri, J.R., Huchard, M., Nebut, C.: Towards a traceability framework for model transformations in Kermeta. In: ECMDA-TW’06: Proceedings of 2rd Workshop on Traceability, Bilbao, Spain. SINTEF, 10–13 July 2006

  17. Farkas, T., Hein, C., Ritter, T.: Automatic evaluation of modelling rules and design. In: 2nd Workshop “From Code Centric to Model Centric Software Engineering: Practices, Implications and ROI”. Bilbao, Spain, 10–13 July 2006

  18. Favre, J.-M.: Towards a basic theory to model driven engineering. In: 3rd Workshop on Software Model Engineering (WISME), Lisboa, Portugal (2004)

  19. Finkelstein, A.: A foolish consistency: technical challenges in consistency management. In: DEXA ’00: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications. Lecture notes in computer science (LNCS), vol. 1873, pp. 1–5. Springer, London (2000)

  20. France, R., Rumpe, B.: Model-driven development of complex software: a research roadmap. In: FOSE ’07: 2007 Future of Software Engineering, pp. 37–54. IEEE Computer Society Press, Washington (2007)

  21. Giese, H., Hildebrandt, S., Neumann, S.: Towards integrating SysML and AUTOSAR modeling via bidirectional model synchronization. In 5th Workshop on Model-Based Development of Embedded Systems (MBEES) (2009)

  22. Giese, H., Hildebrandt, S., Seibel, A.: Improved flexibility and scalability by interpreting story diagrams. In: Magaria, T. Padberg, J., Taentzer, G. (eds.) Proceedings of the Eighth International Workshop on Graph Transformation and Visual Modeling Techniques (GT-VMT 2009), vol. 18. Electronic Communications of the EASST (2009)

  23. Giese, H., Meyer, M., Wagner, R.: A prototype for guideline checking and model transformation in Matlab/Simulink. In: Giese H., Westfechtel, B. (eds.) Proceedings of the 4th International Fujaba Days 2006, Bayreuth, Germany. Technical Report, vol. tr-ri-06-275, pp. 56–60. University of Paderborn, Paderborn (2006)

  24. Giese,. H., Seibel, A., Vogel, T.: A model-driven configuration management system for advanced IT service management. In: Bencomo, N., Blair, G., France, R., Jeanneret, C., Munoz, F. (eds.) Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Models@run.time at the 12th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MoDELS 2009), Denver, Colorado, USA. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 509, pp. 61–70, October 2009

  25. Giese, H., Wagner, R.: Incremental model synchronization with triple graph grammars. In: Nierstrasz, O., Whittle, J., Harel, D., Reggio, G. (eds.) Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MoDELS), Genova, Italy. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), vol. 4199, pp. 543–557. Springer, Berlin (2006)

  26. Giese H., Wagner R.: From model transformation to incremental bidirectional model synchronization. Softw. Syst. Model. 8(1), 3 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Heckel, R., Küster, J.M., Taentzer, G.: Confluence of typed attributed graph transformation systems. In: First International Conference, ICGT 2002 Barcelona, Spain. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), vol. 2505, pp. 161–176, 7–12 October 2002. Springer, London (2002)

  28. IEEE Std 610.12-1990. IEEE Standard Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology (2004)

  29. Köhler, H.J., Nickel, U.A., Niere, J., Zündorf, A.: Integrating UML diagrams for production control systems. In: Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), pp. 241–251. ACM, Limerick (2000)

  30. Le Dang H., Dubois H., Gérard S.: Towards a Traceability model in a MARTE-based methodology for real-time embedded systems. Innov. Syst. Softw. Eng. 4(3), 189–193 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Limón, A.E., Garbajosa, J.: The need for a unifying traceability scheme. In: Oldevik, J., Aagedal, J. (eds.) ECMDA-TW’05: Proceedings of 1st Workshop on Traceability, Nurnberg, Germany, pp. 47–56. SINTEF, 7–10 November 2005

  32. Mäder, P., Gotel, O., Philippow, I.: Enabling automated traceability maintenance by recognizing development activities applied to models. In: 23rd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, pp. 49–58. IEEE Computer Society Press, New York (2008)

  33. Mens, T., Gorp, P.V.: A taxonomy of model transformation. In: Proceedings of the International Workshop on Graph and Model Transformation (GraMoT 2005), vol. 152. Elsevier, Amsterdam (2006)

  34. Paige, R.F. Olsen, G.K., Kolovos, D.S., Zschaler, S., Power, C.: Building model-driven engineering traceability classifications. In: ECMDA-TW’08: Proceedings of 4th Workshop on Traceability, Berlin, Germany. SINTEF, 9–12 June 2008

  35. Plump D.: Hypergraph Rewriting: Critical Pairs and Undecidability of Confluence, pp. 201–213. Wiley, Chichester (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  36. Ráth, I., Bergmann, G., Ökrös, A., Varró, D.: Live model transformations driven by incremental pattern matching. In: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Model Transformation (ICMT), 2008, Zürich, Switzerland. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), vol. 5063, pp. 107–121, 1–2 July 2008. Springer, Berlin (2008). Zeigt effizientes Pattern Matching auf Basis von RETE-Networks. Schränkt Suchraum ein

  37. Rozenberg, G. (eds): Handbook of Graph Grammars and Computing by Graph Transformation: Foundations, vol. 1. World Scientific, Singapore (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  38. Salay, R. Mylopoulos, J. Easterbrook, S.: Managing models through macromodeling. In: ASE ’08: Proceedings of the 2008 23rd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, pp. 447–450. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC (2008)

  39. Salay, R., Mylopoulos, J., Easterbrook, S.: Using macromodels to manage collections of related models. In: 21st International Conference, CAiSE 2009, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), vol. 5565, pp. 141–155, 8–12 June 2009. Springer, Berlin (2009)

  40. Spanoudakis, G., Zisman, A.: Software traceability: a roadmap. In: Handbook of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering: Recent Advances, 3rd edn, pp. 395–428. World Scientific, Singapore (2005)

  41. Van Gorp, P., Altheide, F., Janssens, D.: Traceability and fine-grained constraints in interactive inconsistency management. In ECMDA-TW’06: Proceedings of 2rd Workshop on Traceability, Bilbao, Spain. SINTEF, 10–13 July 2006

  42. Vanhooff, B., Van Baelen, S. Joosen, W., Berbers, Y.: Traceability as input for model transformations. In: ECMDA-TW’07: Proceedings of 3rd Workshop on Traceability, Haifa, Israel, pp. 37–46. SINTEF, 11–15 June 2007

  43. Wagner, R., Giese, H., Nickel, U.: A plug-in for flexible and incremental consistency management. In: Proceedings of the Workshop on Consistency Problems in UML-based Software Development at the UML Conference 2003, San Francisco, USA, Technical Report. Blekinge Institute of Technology (2003)

  44. Walderhaug, S., Johansen, U., Stav, E., Aagedal, J.: Towards a generic solution for traceability in MDD. In: Neple, T., Oldevik, J., Aagedal, J. (eds.) ECMDA-TW’06: ECMDA Traceability Workshop, Bilbao (Spain). SINTEF, 10–13 July 2006

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    Andreas Seibel, Stefan Neumann & Holger Giese

Authors
  1. Andreas Seibel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Stefan Neumann
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Holger Giese
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andreas Seibel.

Additional information

Communicated by Prof. Richard Paige.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Seibel, A., Neumann, S. & Giese, H. Dynamic hierarchical mega models: comprehensive traceability and its efficient maintenance. Softw Syst Model 9, 493–528 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-009-0146-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-009-0146-z

Keywords

Search

Navigation