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Quick fix generation for DSMLs
Ábel Hegedüs ∗ , Ákos Horváth ∗ , István Ráth ∗ , Moisés Castelo Branco † and Dániel Varró ∗
∗ Budapest University of Technology and Economics
Budapest, Hungary
Email: {hegedusa,ahorvath,rath,varro}@mit.bme.hu
† University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Email: mcbranco@gsd.uwaterloo.ca
Abstract—Domain-specific modeling languages (DSML) proved
to be an important asset in creating powerful design tools for
domain experts. Although these tools are capable of preserving
the syntax-correctness of models even during free-hand editing,
they often lack the ability of maintaining model consistency for
complex language-specific constraints. Hence, there is a need
for a tool-level automatism to assist DSML users in resolving
consistency violation problems. In this paper, we describe
an approach for the automatic generation of quick fixes for
DSMLs, taking a set of domain-specific constraints and model
manipulation policies as input. The computation relies on statespace
exploration techniques to find sequences of operations
that decrease the number of inconsistencies. Our approach is
illustrated using a BPMN case study, and it is evaluated by several
experiments to show its feasibility and performance.
I. INTRODUCTION
In model-driven software engineering, domain-specific
modeling (visual) languages (DSMLs) provide a popular
rapid prototyping and generative technique to increase design
reusability, speed up the development process and improve
overall quality by raising the level of abstraction from software
specific details to the problem domain itself. Today, DSMLs
are deployed in many development toolchains to aid both
software designers and domain experts, in order to integrate
deep domain knowledge at an early design phase.
While many standard DSMLs are readily available (such as
AUTOSAR for automotive software design, or process modeling
languages such as BPMN [1] for service-oriented systems),
custom modeling environments are developed in-house by
many organizations to tailor development tools and code
generators to their specific needs. This language engineering
process relies on frameworks such as the Eclipse Modeling
Framework (EMF [2]) or MetaEdit+ [3] that provide powerful
tools for defining DSMLs and to automatically generate textual
or graphical editors for creating domain models.
As domain-specific models are abstract and thus highly
compact representations of the system-under-design, a key
issue (that arises in both standardized and custom-made modeling
environments) is inconsistency management. Inconsistencies
are violations of the well-formedness and correctness
rules of the language that may correspond to design errors, or
violations of the company’s policies and best practices. While
domain-specific editors are usually capable of ensuring that elementary
editing operations preserve syntactic correctness (by
e.g. syntax-driven editing), most DSMLs include additional
language-specific consistency rules that must also be checked.
In the current state-of-the-art of modeling tools, inconsistency
management of complex rules focuses primarily on
the detection of inconsistency rule violations, facilitated by
dedicated constraint evaluators that take e.g. an OCL [4]
expression and generate code that continuously scans the
models and reports problematic model elements to the user.
However, the resolution of these violations is mostly a manual
task: the user may manually alter the model to eliminate the
violations, but this can be a very challenging problem due to
the complexity of the language or the concrete model. As a
result, manually fixing a violation of one inconsistency rule
may introduce new violations of other rules.
In programming languages, the concept of quick fixes (also
called error correction, code completion) is a very popular feature
of integrated development environments such as Eclipse or
Microsoft Visual Studio, which aids programmers in quickly
repairing problematic source code segments. This feature is
deeply integrated into the programming environment and it
can be invoked any time for a detected violation, giving the
developer a list of fixing actions that can be applied instantly.
In the current paper, we propose to adapt this concept to
domain-specific modeling languages. Our aim is to provide a
domain-independent framework (that is applicable for a wide
range of DSMLs), which can efficiently compute complex
fixing action sequences even when multiple, overlapping inconsistency
rule violations are present in the model. To capture
inconsistency rules of a DSML, we use graph patterns that
define declarative structural constraints. Our technique uses
graph transformation rules to specify elementary fix operations
(policies). These operations are automatically combined by a
structural constraint solving algorithm that relies on heuristicsdriven
state-space exploration to find quick fix sequences
efficiently. As a result, our approach provides high-level extensibility
that allows both the language engineer and the end
user to extend the library of supported inconsistency rules and
fixing policies.
The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Section II
introduces the problem of model editing for DSMLs and describes
our BPMN case study used for illustration throughout
the paper. In Section III, we give a more precise definition on
quick fixes for DSMLs, describe the process for generating