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Change propagation and bidirectionality in internal transformation DSLs

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Abstract

Despite good results in several industrial projects, model-driven engineering (MDE) has not been widely adopted in industry. Although MDE has existed for more than a decade now, the lack of tool support is still one of the major problems, according to studies by Staron and Mohaghegi (Staron, in: Model driven engineering languages and systems, Springer, Berlin, 2006; Mohagheghi et al. in Empir Softw Eng 18(1):89–116, 2013). Internal languages offer a solution to this problem for model transformations, which are a key part of MDE. Developers can use existing tools of host languages to create model transformations in a familiar environment. These internal languages, however, typically lack key features such as change propagation or bidirectional transformations. In our opinion, one reason is that existing formalisms for these properties are not well suited for textual languages. In this paper, we present a new formalism describing incremental, bidirectional model synchronizations using synchronization blocks. We prove the ability of this formalism to detect and repair inconsistencies and show its hippocraticness. We use this formalism to create a single internal model transformation language for unidirectional and bidirectional model transformations with optional change propagation. In total, we currently provide 18 operation modes based on a single specification. At the same time, the language may reuse tool support for C#. We validate the applicability of our language using a synthetic example with a transformation from finite state machines to Petri nets where we achieved speedups of up to multiple orders of magnitude compared to classical batch transformations.

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Notes

  1. This does not mean that internal DSLs superior per se. One has to be very careful when designing an internal DSL to gain the benefits of the host language integration while still preserving the advantages of a model transformation language such as a (presumably) better understandability. The latter can be more easily accounted for in a dedicated, i.e., external, language.

  2. VIATRA Query (formerly named EMF-IncQuery) does support change propagation and is implemented as an internal DSL in Xtend, but does not support bidirectional transformations.

  3. http://github.com/NMFCode/NMF/tree/master/Expressions/.

  4. Also referred to as model-at-a-time, as opposed to object-at-a-time.

  5. Due to the slight difference in the semantics for ordered and unordered collections, one could also separate the two of them in different methods. Our counter-arguments are that this increases the size of the API. Furthermore, it is often not clear statically if a collection is ordered.

  6. This may be acceptable because the—let us call such a thing for the moment a semi-lens—can be specified much more generic in this way. An example of such a construct is given in Sect. 6.

  7. We do not support dynamic creation of isomorphisms, the isomorphisms must be given at compile time.

  8. If this concept was added in only one of the metamodels, the information simply would not be propagated but no additional synchronization would be required.

  9. We have not yet used synchronization rule templates in practical use cases, yet. We suspect that they are harder to create than transformation rule templates because there is fewer support for abstract incrementalizable lenses than for regular abstract methods.

  10. We ignored the linebreak in the Listing, because editors usually allow 85 characters in a single line.

  11. We believe that a partial propagation is also possible in TGGs but requires many more rules.

  12. Perhaps, the type for places is abstract, in that case, the synchronization would indeed have to be changed to specify a default place type for this case.

  13. This includes 14 blank lines and 28 lines with only braces.

  14. Up to propagation of partial changes as discussed above.

  15. This includes 41 blank lines and 47 lines with only braces.

  16. eMoflon rules: https://github.com/NMFCode/SynchronizationsBenchmark/tree/master/eMoflon/FiniteStatesToPetriNets/src/org/moflon/tgg/mosl/rules, NMF Synchronizations implementation: https://github.com/NMFCode/SynchronizationsBenchmark/blob/master/Transformations/SynchronizationsImplementation.cs.

  17. http://github.com/NMFCode/SynchronizationsBenchmark/.

  18. For example, deleting an element from an ordered list is a O(n) operation.

  19. http://sdmlib.org/.

  20. Although our formalization uses state-based lenses for simplicity, the implementation actually works delta-based, which is important for multi-valued synchronization blocks.

  21. https://github.com/ekmett/lens, accessed 19/06/2017.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers that helped us to shape the paper as it is of today. Furthermore, we would like to thank Anthony Anjorin, who has helped us with the eMoflon-implementation of the example finite state machines to Petri nets synchronization.

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  1. FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik, Haid-und-Neu-Straße 10-14, 76131, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Georg Hinkel

  2. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Am Fasanengarten 5, 76131, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Erik Burger

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Correspondence to Georg Hinkel.

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Communicated by Prof. Alfonso Pierantonio, Jasmin Blanchette, Francis Bordeleau, Nikolai Kosmatov, Gabi Taentzer, and Manuel Wimmer.

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Hinkel, G., Burger, E. Change propagation and bidirectionality in internal transformation DSLs. Softw Syst Model 18, 249–278 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-017-0617-6

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