Selective and Consistent Undoing of Model Changes

Abstract

There are many reasons why modeling tools support the undoing of model changes. However, the sequential undoing is no longer useful for interrelated, multi-diagrammatic modeling languages where model changes in one diagram may also affect other diagrams. This paper introduces selective undoing of model changes where the designer decides which model elements to undo and our approach automatically suggests related changes in other diagrams that should be undone also. Our approach identifies dependencies among model changes through standard consistency and well-formedness constraints. It then investigates whether an undo causes inconsistencies and uses the dependencies to explore which other model changes to undo to preserve consistency. Our approach is fully automated and correct with respect to the constraints provided. Our approach is also applicable to legacy models provided what the models were version controlled. We demonstrate our approach’s scalability and correctness based on empirical evidence for a range of large, third party models. The undoing is as complete and correct as the constraints are complete and correct.