Towards consistency-preserving model evolution

Abstract

Model-based software development poses requirements on the quality of models which cannot yet be fulfilled by models in the standard object-oriented modeling language, the UML. In particular, the semantic consistency of UML models is an open issue. Model-based evolution, as one crucial aspect of model-based development, requires support for re-establishing the consistency of a new version of the model after an evolution step.In this position paper, we observe that, under certain assumptions, the new model can be shown to be consistent if a certain semantic relation holds between the replaced sub-models. Thereby, one can avoid a complete re-iteration of all consistency checks for the new model, concentrating instead on those parts that have been modified.