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Adapting transformations to metamodel changes via external transformation composition

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Abstract

Evolution is inherent to software systemsbecause of the rapid improvement of technologies and business logic. As a software development paradigm, model driven engineering (MDE) is also affected by this problem. More concretely, being metamodels the cornerstone of MDE, their evolution impacts the rest of software artefacts involved in a development process, i.e., models and transformations. The influence over models has been tackled and partially solved in previous works. This paper focuses on the impact over transformations. We propose an approach to adapt transformations by means of external transformation composition. That is, we chain impacted transformations to particular adaptation transformations which deal with either refactoring/destruction changes or construction changes. Our approach semi-automatically generates such transformations by using the AtlanMod matching language, a DSL to define model matching strategies. To provide with a proof of concept for our proposal, we adapt transformations written in terms of object-relational database metamodels when such metamodels evolve in time.

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Notes

  1. We use adaptation, co-adaptation, and co-evolution as interchangeable terms.

  2. Although metamodel evolution is rarely performed simultaneously to avoid conflicts, we want to spell out all the possible scenarios.

  3. \(\beta \) and \(\acute{\beta }\) are the transformations performing a similar functionality in the scenarios where \({MM}_B\) evolves.

  4. www.eclipse.org/.

  5. http://wiki.eclipse.org/AML.

  6. The possible pairs are: (\({MM}_{A}\), \({MM}_{B^\prime }\)), (\({MM}_{A^\prime }\), \({MM}_{B}\)), (\({MM}_{A^\prime }\), \({MM}_{B^\prime }\)), (\({MM}_{B^\prime }\),\({MM}_{A}\)), (\({MM}_{B}\), \({MM}_{A^\prime }\)), or (\({MM}_{B^\prime }\), \({MM}_{A^\prime }\)).

  7. http://wiki.eclipse.org/EMF_Compare/FAQ.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. AtlanMod, ASCOLA, INRIA-EMN, Nantes, France

    Kelly Garcés

  2. Kybele Research Group, Rey Juan Carlos University, Madrid, Spain

    Juan M. Vara & Esperanza Marcos

  3. AtlanMod, INRIA-EMN, Nantes, France

    Frédéric Jouault

Authors
  1. Kelly Garcés
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  2. Juan M. Vara
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  3. Frédéric Jouault
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  4. Esperanza Marcos
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Correspondence to Kelly Garcés.

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Garcés, K., Vara, J.M., Jouault, F. et al. Adapting transformations to metamodel changes via external transformation composition. Softw Syst Model 13, 789–806 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-012-0297-1

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