Domain Completeness of Model Transformations and Synchronisations

Doctoral thesis (2016)

The intrinsic question of most activities in information science, in practice or science, is “Does a given system satisfy the requirements regarding its application?” Commonly, requirements are expressed ... [more ▼]

The intrinsic question of most activities in information science, in practice or science, is “Does a given system satisfy the requirements regarding its application?” Commonly, requirements are expressed and accessible by means of models, mostly in a diagrammatic representation by visual models. The requirements may change over time and are often defined from different perspectives and within different domains. This implies that models may be transformed either within the same domain-specific visual modelling language or into models in another language. Furthermore, model updates may be synchronised between different models. Most types of visual models can be represented by graphs where model transformations and synchronisations are performed by graph transformations. The theory of graph transformations emerged from its origins in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a generalisation of term and tree rewriting systems to an important field in (theoretical) computer science with applications particularly in visual modelling techniques, model transformations, synchronisations and behavioural specifications of models. Its formal foundations but likewise visual notation enable both precise definitions and proofs of important properties of model transformations and synchronisations from a theoretical point of view and an intuitive approach for specifying transformations and model updates from an engineer’s point of view. The recent results were presented in the EATCS monographs “Fundamentals of Algebraic Graph Transformation” (FAGT) in 2006 and its sequel “Graph and Model Transformation: General Framework and Applications” (GraMoT) in 2015. This thesis concentrates on one important property of model transformations and synchronisations, i.e., syntactical completeness. Syntactical completeness of model transformations means that given a specification for transforming models from a source modelling language into models in a target language, then all source models can be completely transformed into corresponding target models. In the same given context, syntactical completeness of model synchronisations means that all source model updates can be completely synchronised, resulting in corresponding target model updates. This work is essentially based on the GraMoT book and mainly extends its results for model transformations and synchronisations based on triple graph grammars by a new more general notion of syntactical completeness, namely domain completeness, together with corresponding verification techniques. Furthermore, the results are instantiated to the verification of the syntactical completeness of software transformations and synchronisations. The well-known transformation of UML class diagrams into relational database models and the transformation of programs of a small object-oriented programming language into class diagrams serve as running examples. The existing AGG tool is used to support the verification of the given examples in practice. [less ▲]

Triple Graph Grammars in the Large for Translating Satellite Procedures - Extended Version

Report (2014)

Software translation is a challenging task. Several requirements are important - including automation of the execution, maintainability of the translation patterns, and, most importantly, reliability ... [more ▼]

Software translation is a challenging task. Several requirements are important - including automation of the execution, maintainability of the translation patterns, and, most importantly, reliability concerning the correctness of the translation. Triple graph grammars (TGGs) have shown to be an intuitive, wellde ned technique for model translation. In this paper, we leverage TGGs for industry scale software translations. The approach is implemented using the Eclipse-based graph transformation tool Henshin and has been successfully applied in a large industrial project with the satellite operator SES on the translation of satellite control procedures. We evaluate the approach regarding requirements from the project and performance on a complete set of procedures of one satellite. [less ▲]

Solving the FIXML2Code-case Study with HenshinTGG

in Rose, Louis M.; Krause, Christian; Horn, Tassilo (Eds.) Proceedings of the 7th Transformation Tool Contest - part of the Software Technologies: Applications and Foundations (STAF 2014) federation of conferences (2014)

Triple graph grammars (TGGs) provide a formal framework for bidirectional model transformations. As in practice, TGGs are primarily used in pure model-to-model transformation scenarios, tools for text-to ... [more ▼]

Triple graph grammars (TGGs) provide a formal framework for bidirectional model transformations. As in practice, TGGs are primarily used in pure model-to-model transformation scenarios, tools for text-to-model and model-to-text transformations make them also applicable in text-to-text transformation contexts. This paper presents a solution for the text-to-text transformation case study of the Transformation Tool Contest 2014 on translating FIXML (an XML notation for financial transactions) to source code written in Java, C# or C++. The solution uses the HenshinTGG tool for specifying and executing model-to-model transformations based on the formal concept of TGGs as well as the Xtext tool for parsing XML content to yield its abstract syntax tree (text-to-model transformation) and serialising abstract syntax trees to source code (model-to-text transformation). The approach is evaluated concerning a given set of criteria. [less ▲]

On an Automated Translation of Satellite Procedures Using Triple Graph Grammars

in Duddy, Keith; Kappel, Gerti (Eds.) Theory and Practice of Model Transformations (2013)

Model transformation based on triple graph grammars (TGGs) is a general, intuitive and formally well defined technique for the translation of models [5,6,2]. While previous concepts and case studies were ... [more ▼]

Model transformation based on triple graph grammars (TGGs) is a general, intuitive and formally well defined technique for the translation of models [5,6,2]. While previous concepts and case studies were focused mainly on visual models of software and systems, this article describes an industrial application of model transformations based on TGGs as a powerful technique for software translation using the tool Henshin [1]. The general problem in this scenario is to translate source code that is currently in use into corresponding source code that shall run on a new system. Up to now, this problem was addressed based on manually written converters, parser generators, compiler-compilers or meta-programming environments using term rewriting or similar techniques (see e. g. [4]). [less ▲]

Correctness and Completeness of Generalised Concurrent Model Synchronisation Based on Triple Graph Grammars

in Baudry, Benoit; Dingel, Juergen; Lucio, Levi (Eds.) et al Proc. Int. Workshop on Analysis of Model Transformations 2013 (AMT'13) (2013)

On the Concurrent Semantics of Transformation Systems with Negative Application Conditions

Report (2012)

Graph Transformation Systems (GTSs) are an integrated formal speci cation framework for modelling and analysing structural and behavioural aspects of systems. The evolution of a system is modelled by the ... [more ▼]

Graph Transformation Systems (GTSs) are an integrated formal speci cation framework for modelling and analysing structural and behavioural aspects of systems. The evolution of a system is modelled by the application of rules to the graphs representing its states and, since typically such rules have local e ects, GTSs are particularly suitable for modelling concurrent and distributed systems where several rules can be applied in parallel. Thus, it is no surprise that a large body of literature is dedicated to the study of the concurrent semantics of graph transformation systems. [less ▲]