Consistency-preserving edit scripts in model versioning

• Published in: 2013 28th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE) pp. 191 - 201
• Main Authors: Kehrer, Timo, Kelter, Udo, Taentzer, Gabriele
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01-11-2013
• Subjects: Abstracts; Adaptation models; Concrete; Merging; Semantics; Syntactics; Unified modeling language
• DOI: 10.1109/ASE.2013.6693079

In model-based software development, models are iteratively evolved. To optimally support model evolution, developers need adequate tools for model versioning tasks, including comparison, patching, and merging of models. A significant disadvantage of tools currently available is that they display, and operate with, low-level model changes which refer to internal model representations and which can lead to intermediate inconsistent states. Higher-level consistency-preserving edit operations including refactorings are better suited to explain changes or to resolve conflicts. This paper presents an automatic procedure which transforms a low-level difference into an executable edit script which uses consistency-preserving edit operations only. Edit scripts support consistent model patching and merging on a higher abstraction level. Our approach to edit script generation has been evaluated in a larger real-world case study.