Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Integrating UML and ALF: An Approach to Overcome the Code Generation Dilemma in Model-Driven Software Engineering

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development (MODELSWARD 2019)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1161))

  • 746 Accesses

Abstract

The state of the art in model-driven software engineering is a combination of structural modeling and conventional programming to supply the operational behavior of the system. This fact leads to the so-called code generation dilemma when model and hand-written code evolve independently during the software development process. In this paper we present an approach of integrating two OMG standards to overcome this problem: A tight integration of UML used for structural modeling and the Action Language for Foundational UML (ALF) for behavioral modeling using a textual surface notation leads to a full-blown model-driven process which allows for the generation of fully executable source code. Supplying hand-written code fragments in the target language is no longer necessary.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.eclipse.org/modeling/gmp/.

  2. 2.

    https://www.eclipse.org/Xtext/.

  3. 3.

    https://www.eclipse.org/acceleo/.

  4. 4.

    https://www.eclipse.org/acceleo/.

  5. 5.

    http://cruise.site.uottawa.ca/umple.

  6. 6.

    http://wiki.eclipse.org/Xcore.

  7. 7.

    https://www.nomagic.com/products/magicdraw.

  8. 8.

    http://alf.modeldriven.org.

  9. 9.

    https://www.nomagic.com/product-addons/magicdraw-addons/cameo-simulation-toolkit.

References

  1. Buchmann, T.: Valkyrie: a UML-based model-driven environment for model-driven software engineering. In: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Software Paradigm Trends, ICSOFT 2012, pp. 147–157. SciTePress, Rome (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Buchmann, T.: Prodeling with the action language for foundational UML. In: Damiani, E., Spanoudakis, G., Maciaszek, L.A. (eds.) ENASE 2017 - Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering, Porto, Portugal, 28–29 April 2017, pp. 263–270. SciTePress (2017). https://doi.org/10.5220/0006353602630270

  3. Buchmann, T.: BXtend - a framework for (bidirectional) incremental model transformations. In: Hammoudi, S., Pires, L.F., Selic, B. (eds.) Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development, MODELSWARD 2018, Funchal, Madeira - Portugal, 22–24 January 2018, pp. 336–345. SciTePress (2018). https://doi.org/10.5220/0006563503360345

  4. Buchmann, T., Dotor, A., Westfechtel, B.: Model-driven software engineering: concepts and tools for modeling-in-the-large with package diagrams. Comput. Sci. - Res. Dev. 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00450-011-0201-1

  5. Buchmann, T., Greiner, S.: Handcrafting a triple graph transformation system to realize round-trip engineering between UML class models and Java source code. In: Maciaszek, L.A., Cardoso, J.S., Ludwig, A., van Sinderen, M., Cabello, E. (eds.) Proceedings of the 11th International Joint Conference on Software Technologies, ICSOFT 2016 - Volume 2: ICSOFT-PT, Lisbon, Portugal, 24–26 July 2016, pp. 27–38. SciTePress (2016). https://doi.org/10.5220/0005957100270038

  6. Buchmann, T., Schwägerl, F.: On a-posteriori integration of Ecore models and hand-written Java code. In: Lorenz, P., van Sinderen, M., Cardoso, J. (eds.) Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Software Paradigm Trends, pp. 95–102. SciTePress, July 2015. https://doi.org/10.5220/0005552200950102

  7. Buchmann, T., Westfechtel, B.: Using Triple Graph Grammars to Realize Incremental Round-Trip Engineering. IET Software, July 2016. https://doi.org/10.1049/iet-sen.2015.0125

  8. Buchmann, T., Westfechtel, B., Winetzhammer, S.: The added value of programmed graph transformations – a case study from software configuration management. In: Schürr, A., Varró, D., Varró, G. (eds.) AGTIVE 2011. LNCS, vol. 7233, pp. 198–209. Springer, Heidelberg (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34176-2_17

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  9. Greiner, S., Buchmann, T., Westfechtel, B.: Bidirectional transformations with QVT-R: a case study in round-trip engineering UML class models and Java source code. In: MODELSWARD 2016 - Proceedings of the 4rd International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development, Rome, Italy, 19–21 February 2016, pp. 15–27 (2016). https://doi.org/10.5220/0005644700150027

  10. Guermazi, S., Tatibouet, J., Cuccuru, A., Seidewitz, E., Dhouib, S., Gérard, S.: Executable modeling with fUML and Alf in Papyrus: tooling and experiments. In: Mayerhofer et al. [13], pp. 3–8

    Google Scholar 

  11. Guermazi, S., Tatibouet, J., Cuccuru, A., Seidewitz, E., Dhouib, S., Gérard, S.: Executable modeling with fUML and Alf in papyrus: Tooling and experiments. In: Mayerhofer et al. [13], pp. 3–8. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1560/paper1.pdf

  12. Lethbridge, T.C., Forward, A., Badreddin, O.: Umplification: refactoring to incrementally add abstraction to a program. In: 2010 17th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering (WCRE), pp. 220–224. IEEE (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Mayerhofer, T., Langer, P., Seidewitz, E., Gray, J. (eds.): Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Executable Modeling co-located with ACM/IEEE 18th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems, MODELS 2015, Ottawa, Canada, 27 September 2015, CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 1560. CEUR-WS.org (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  14. OMG: MOF Model to Text Transformation Language, v1.0. OMG, Needham, MA, formal/2008-01-16 edn., January 2008

    Google Scholar 

  15. OMG: Action Language for Foundational UML (ALF). Object Management Group, Needham, MA, formal/2013-09-01 edn., September 2013

    Google Scholar 

  16. OMG: Semantics of a Foundational Subset for Executable UML Models (fUML). Object Management Group, Needham, MA, formal/2013-08-06 edn., August 2013

    Google Scholar 

  17. OMG: Object Constraint Language. OMG, Needham, MA, formal/2014-02-03 edn., February 2014

    Google Scholar 

  18. OMG: Meta Object Facility (MOF) Version 2.5. OMG, Needham, MA, formal/2015-06-05 edn. (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  19. OMG: Unified Modeling Language (UML). Object Management Group, Needham, MA, formal/15-03-01 edn., March 2015

    Google Scholar 

  20. Schröpfer, J., Buchmann, T.: Unifying modeling and programming with Valkyrie. In: Hammoudi, S., Pires, L.F., Selic, B. (eds.) Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development, MODELSWARD 2019, Prague, Czech Republic, 20–22 February, pp. 27–38. SciTePress (2019). https://doi.org/10.5220/0007259600270038

  21. Seidewitz, E.: A development environment for the Alf language within the MagicDraw UML tool (tool demo). In: Combemale, B., Mernik, M., Rumpe, B. (eds.) Proceedings of the 10th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering, SLE 2017, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 23–24 October 2017, pp. 217–220. ACM (2017). https://doi.org/10.1145/3136014.3136028

  22. Steinberg, D., Budinsky, F., Paternostro, M., Merks, E.: EMF Eclipse Modeling Framework. The Eclipse Series, 2nd edn. Addison-Wesley, Boston (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  23. The Fujaba Developer Teams from Paderborn, Kassel, Darmstadt, Siegen and Bayreuth: The Fujaba Tool Suite 2005: An Overview About the Development Efforts in Paderborn, Kassel, Darmstadt, Siegen and Bayreuth. In: Giese, H., Zündorf, A. (eds.) Proceedings of the 3rd international Fujaba Days, pp. 1–13, September 2005

    Google Scholar 

  24. Völter, M., Stahl, T., Bettin, J., Haase, A., Helsen, S.: Model-Driven Software Development: Technology, Engineering, Management. Wiley, Hoboken (2006)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Applied Computer Science I, University of Bayreuth, 95440, Bayreuth, Germany

    Johannes Schröpfer & Thomas Buchmann

Authors
  1. Johannes Schröpfer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Thomas Buchmann
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Johannes Schröpfer .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Siège du Groupe ESEO, Angers, France

    Slimane Hammoudi

  2. University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Luís Ferreira Pires

  3. Malina Software Corporation, Nepean, ON, Canada

    Bran Selić

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Schröpfer, J., Buchmann, T. (2020). Integrating UML and ALF: An Approach to Overcome the Code Generation Dilemma in Model-Driven Software Engineering. In: Hammoudi, S., Pires, L., Selić, B. (eds) Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development. MODELSWARD 2019. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1161. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37873-8_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37873-8_1

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-37872-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-37873-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation