M2M Operation Recorder

Last Updated on Thursday, 04 February 2010 11:51 Written by Administrator Monday, 01 February 2010 14:52

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Description | M2M Operation Specification Process | Realization | Graphical User Interface | Evaluation


Description

During the last decade several approaches have been proposed for easing the burden of writing model transformation rules by hand. Among them are Model Transformation By-Example (MTBE) approaches aiming at generalizing example models to gain model transformation rules. Current MTBE approaches work fine for one-to-one transformation rules, however, for complex transformation rules they seem to be too limited. A promising technique for developing complex transformation rules by-example is recording the operations performed on the example models, which is called Model Transformation By-Demonstration (MTBD). However, until now MTBD approaches are only available for in-place transformations, but not for model-to-model transformations.

With the M2M Operation Recorder, we extend our MTBD approach, which has been primarily defined for in-place transformations, for model-to-model transformations. By this, we allow a semi-automatic generation of transformation rules which goes beyond existing MTBE approaches for model-to-model transformations. In particular, we show how open issues of alignment-based MTBE approaches are now solved by switching to a demonstration-based approach. For showing the applicability of the approach, we developed an Eclipse-based prototype which supports the generation of ATL code out of EMF-based example models.

Core Features:

  • language independence
  • editor independence
  • powerful generalization techniques

 

M2M Transformation Demonstration Process

The demonstration process is divided in three phases:

  1. Modeling the examples
  2. Generalization of the specific examples to general transformation rules
  3. Generation of ATL code

M2M Operation Specification Process

 

Realization

  • Eclipse Plug-In
  • For any EMF Ecore-based models
  • Based on the template inference mechanisms of the Operation Recorder
  • State-based change detection using EMF Compare
  • JFace/SWT graphical user interface
  • Generation of ATL code using higher-order transformations

Graphical User Interface

M2M Operation Specification GUI

 

Evaluation

Case Study 1: UML Class Diagram to Entity Relationship Diagram

 Metamodels

Transformation Models