Maintaining invariant traceability through bidirectional transformations

Yu, Yijun; Lin, Yu; Hu, Zhenjiang; Hidaka, Soichiro; Hiroyuki, Kato and Montrieux, Lionel (2012). Maintaining invariant traceability through bidirectional transformations. In: 34th International Conference on Software Engineering, 2-9 June 2012, Zurich, Switzerland, pp. 540–550.

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DOI (Digital Object Identifier) Link:	http://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE.2012.6227162
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Abstract

Following the "convention over configuration" paradigm, model-driven development (MDD) generates code to implement the "default" behaviour that has been specified by a template separate from the input model, reducing the decision effort of developers. For flexibility, users of MDD are allowed to customise the model and the generated code in parallel. A synchronisation of changed model or code is maintained by reflecting them on the other end of the code generation, as long as the traceability is unchanged. However, such invariant traceability between corresponding model and code elements can be violated either when (a) users of MDD protect custom changes from the generated code, or when (b) developers of MDD change the template for generating the default behaviour. A mismatch between user and template code is inevitable as they evolve for their own purposes. In this paper, we propose a two-layered invariant traceability framework that reduces the number of mismatches through bidirectional transformations. On top of existing vertical (model↔code) synchronisations between a model and the template code, a horizontal (code↔code) synchronisation between user and template code is supported, aligning the changes in both directions. Our blinkit tool is evaluated using the data set available from the CVS repositories of a MDD project: Eclipse MDT/GMF.

Item Type:

Conference Item

2012 IEEE

ISSN:

0270-5257

Project Funding Details:

Funded Project Name	Project ID	Funding Body
Not Set	Not Set	EU SecureChange Project
Not Set	Not Set	Microsoft SEIF Project
Not Set	Not Set	NII BiG Project

Extra Information:

Published in Proceedings 34th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2012), Glinz, M., Murphy, G. and Pezze (eds), IEEE, 978-1-4673-1067-3, pp. 540-550

Keywords:

software engineering; traceability; model-driven development; bidirectional transformations

Academic Unit/Department:

Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) > Computing and Communications
Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)

Interdisciplinary Research Centre:

Centre for Research in Computing (CRC)

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