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Incremental execution of model-to-text transformations using property access traces

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Abstract

Automatic generation of textual artefacts (including code, documentation, configuration files, build scripts, etc.) from models in a software development process through the application of model-to-text (M2T) transformation is a common MDE activity. Despite the importance of M2T transformation, contemporary M2T languages lack support for developing transformations that scale with the size of the input model. As MDE is applied to systems of increasing size and complexity, a lack of scalability in M2T transformation languages hinders industrial adoption. In this paper, we propose a form of runtime analysis that can be used to identify the impact of source model changes on generated textual artefacts. The structures produced by this runtime analysis, property access traces, can be used to perform efficient source-incremental transformation: our experiments show an average reduction of 60% in transformation execution time compared to non-incremental (batch) transformation.

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Notes

  1. The incremental Xpand engine is discussed in detail in Sect. 5.

  2. The prototype is available in https://github.com/epsilonlabs/incremental-egl.

  3. Target incrementality is achieved when target files are not unnecessarily modified on disc (thus changing their last-modified timestamp) if their content has not changed.

  4. http://eclipse.org/modeling/m2t/??project=xpand.

  5. https://www.eclipse.org/acceleo/.

  6. EGX rules also support guards which can further limit their applicability.

  7. https://github.com/kolovos/pongo.

  8. https://git.eclipse.org/c/gmf-tooling.

  9. EGL uses efficient internal representation mechanisms (i.e. string buffers) and standard file I/O operations. The bulk of this time is spent on genuine execution of the logic of the template.

  10. http://eclipse.org/modeling/m2t/?project=xpand.

  11. http://help.eclipse.org/staging/neon2/index.jsp?topic=/org.eclipse.xpand.doc/help/incrementalGeneration_usage.html.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the European Commission, through the Scalable Modelling and Model Management on the Cloud (MONDO) FP7 STREP project (Grant #611125). The motivating example discussed in this paper was taken from Rose’s work on the INESS project, which was supported by the European Commission and co-funded under the 7th Framework Programme (Grant #218575).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of York, Deramore Lane, Heslington, York, YO10 5GH, UK

    Babajide Ogunyomi, Louis M. Rose & Dimitrios S. Kolovos

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  1. Babajide Ogunyomi
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  2. Louis M. Rose
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  3. Dimitrios S. Kolovos
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Correspondence to Babajide Ogunyomi.

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Prof. Alfonso Pierantonio, Jasmin Blanchette, Francis Bordeleau, Nikolai Kosmatov, Gabi Taentzer, and ManuelWimmer.

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Ogunyomi, B., Rose, L.M. & Kolovos, D.S. Incremental execution of model-to-text transformations using property access traces. Softw Syst Model 18, 367–383 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-018-0666-5

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