Research On Transformation Rule Modeling And Rule Code Generation

The application of Model Driven Architecture (MDA) in software engineering hasobtained main concern in Model Driven Software Development (MDSD). MDSD aimsto improve the software development and to take the software complexity in control byraising the level of abstraction. Since model construction is not an easy work, thedefinition of transformation rule among different models becomes even complicated.Besides, the development technology and model transformation language differ indifferent MDSD platforms, which result in the lack of compatibility among platforms.This paper propose a new modeling method for transformation rule, so as to solvethe above problems. It defines a transformation rule metamodel, which is independentfrom platforms, to represent the transformation rule model. This transformation rulemodel can describe how to convert models from one to another. When it works, thetransformation rule model is converted to transformation language model on specificplatform, and then a code template for transformation rule is designed to make the autotransformation from language model to rule code available. At last, this generatedtransformation rule code can be the input of the model transformation engine, to put thetransformation into work. The following gives the work flow of the proposed method:Firstly, we make an analysis of the model transformation requirements, and definethe basic elements of model transformation by designing a platform independent meta-model of transformation rule. Secondly, for the transformation rule model, a modelingplug-in is implemented through the plug-in technology in Eclipse. This plug-in can notonly construct a transformation rule model, but also automatically generate thecorresponding XML. This paper takes the model transformation language, ATL as anexample, to demonstrate how a transformation rule model can be converted to a specifictransformation language model. In the demonstration, it firstly constructs an Ecoremetamodel of ATL based on KM3language, and then gives the definition oftransformation rule metamodel and ATL metamodel, as well as the transformationrelationship between them, on the platform of Eclipse. Based on the transformationrelationship, the transformation rule model can be automatically converted to ATLmodel. Finally, a transformation template for ATL language is written by the utilizationof template technologies, therefore, ATL code can be automatically generated from ATLmodel. The proposed transformation rule metamodel is independent from platform, whichmakes the transformation to a specific language much more flexible. Besides, thismetamodel enables the code reuse for model transformation, which helps theprogrammer to know the transformation process, and therefore, the development workcan be manageable and efficient. Furthermore, the proposed method is tested on Eclipseplatform, and the experimental results show that the new method can make a goodperformance in both feasibility and efficiency, which offers a new idea for thedevelopment of MDSD and model transformation.