Specifying and Recognizing Model Changes in Networks of Models

• Antragstellerinnen / Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Udo Kelter; Professorin Dr. Gabriele Taentzer
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Softwaretechnik und Programmiersprachen
• Förderung: Förderung von 2012 bis 2021
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 221707513

Model-based software development (MBSD) has become a widespread paradigm for developing software in various application domains. Models are a good means to abstract from details, hence they have the potential to carry important knowledge about different aspects of software systems. Hence, models are subject to version management, notably comparison, patching and updating of models.The first funding phase of this project has been dedicated to the lifting of version management services to a higher level of abstraction. Instead of reporting model changes elementwise and in their internal representations, they are reported on the basis of domain-specific edit operations as known from domain-specific model editors. They cluster atomic changes in a meaningful way and abstract from internal representations.A system under development is often modeled by several related models, i.e., a network of models, which represents different parts or perspectives of the system representing viewpoints of different stakeholders. Although developers often require to revise single models of such a network independently, this requirement is not met by current approaches to model versioning. The whole network of models is considered as one monolithic unit of versioning.The main goal of the second funding phase of the project is to remove this limitation, i.e., to allow single models and moreover, any subset of models, being independent units of versioning. This is a challenge if model relations are implemented by additional correspondence (or trace) structures which have to be subject of versioning as well. Our solution shall lead to an effective version management system for co-evolving models being implemented on top of the Eclipse Model Project. To lift version management for co-evolving models to domain-specific edit operations as well, solutions of the first funding phase are extended to co-evolving models. To increase the usability of our tool support, it is further enriched yielding a comprehensive configuration support for domain experts. The implemented tool environment will be evaluated in a variety of case studies considering long-living systems in the fields of automation engineering and information systems.

• DFG-Verfahren: Schwerpunktprogramme
• Teilprojekt zu: SPP 1593: Design for Future - Managed Software Evolution