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Understanding MDE projects: megamodels to the rescue for architecture recovery

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Abstract

Conventional wisdom on Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) suggests that this software discipline is the key to achieve superior automation, whether it be refactoring, simulation, or code generation. However, the diversity of employed languages and technologies blurs the picture making it difficult to analyze existing MDE-based projects in order to retrieve architectural information to foster a better understanding about the rationale behind them. Thus, the ability of carefully analyzing projects to identify their components and their interrelationships is key to obtain representations at a higher level of abstraction that can support reuse processes. In this paper, a megamodel-based approach to the reverse engineering of model-driven projects is proposed in order to leverage the representation of the involved technologies and assets. An automated recovery technique implemented by the MDEprofiler infrastructure is presented and illustrated by analyzing community projects in terms of basic MDE artifacts (such as models and metamodels) and the usage of common technologies such as model transformations and code generators.

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Notes

  1. https://www.eclipse.org/atl/atlTransformations/.

  2. https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/file.html.

  3. https://developer.github.com/v3/.

  4. Project imported from https://github.com/kiyo07/UMLStateMachine2NuSMV.

  5. Km3 to Ecore injector project: https://github.com/atlanmod/EMFTVM-D/tree/master/deprecated/org.atl.eclipse.km3/src/org/atl/eclipse/km3 .

  6. EMFCompare:https://www.eclipse.org/emf/compare/.

  7. Our project developed to support the methodology: https://github.com/MDEGroup/MDEProfiler.

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

  9. http://visjs.org.

  10. A replication package consisting of the MDEprofiler tool, the analyzed projects, and of the obtained results is available for download at https://github.com/MDEGroup/MDEProfiler.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of L’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy

    Juri Di Rocco, Davide Di Ruscio & Alfonso Pierantonio

  2. Gran Sasso Science Institute, L’Aquila, Italy

    Ludovico Iovino

  3. University of Koblenz-Landau, Mainz, Germany

    Johannes Härtel & Ralf Lämmel

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  1. Juri Di Rocco
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  2. Davide Di Ruscio
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  3. Johannes Härtel
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  4. Ludovico Iovino
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Correspondence to Ludovico Iovino.

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Communicated by Jesús Sánchez Cuadrado and Arend Rensink.

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Di Rocco, J., Di Ruscio, D., Härtel, J. et al. Understanding MDE projects: megamodels to the rescue for architecture recovery. Softw Syst Model 19, 401–423 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-019-00748-7

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