Automating Change Evolution in Model-Driven Engineering

Jeff Gray, Yuehua Lin, Jing Zhang

Computer · 2006 · 72 citations · 11 references

Concepts

TL;DR

The escalating complexity of software and system models hampers rapid exploration of design decisions, but combining model transformation with aspect‑oriented techniques can improve productivity, quality, and enable large‑scale source‑code adaptation from small modeling changes. The authors propose an aspect‑weaver for modeling tools that lets engineers explore alternative configurations and automatically generate program‑transformation rules to adapt legacy source code at scale.

Abstract

The escalating complexity of software and system models is making it difficult to rapidly explore the effects of a design decision. Automating such exploration with model transformation and aspect-oriented techniques can improve both productivity and model quality. The combination of model transformation and aspect weaving provides a powerful technology for rapidly transforming legacy systems from the high-level properties that models describe. Further, by applying aspect-oriented techniques and program transformation, small changes at the modeling level can trigger very large transformations at the source code level. Thus, model engineers can explore alternative configurations using an aspect weaver targeted for modeling tools and then use the models to generate program transformation rules for adapting legacy source code on a wide scale.

References

11