Consistency-Preserving Model Evolution through Transformations

With model-based development being on the verge of becoming an industrial standard, the topic of research of statically checking the consistency of a model made up of several submodels has already received increasing attention. The evolution of models within software engineering requires support for incremental consistency analysis techniques of a new version of the model after evolution, thereby avoiding a complete reiteration of all consistency tests. In this paper, we discuss the problem of preserving consistency within model-based evolution focusing on UML-RT models. We introduce the concept of a model transformation rule that captures an evolution step. Composition of several evolution steps leads to a complex evolution of a model. For each evolution step, we study the effects on the consistency of the overall model and provide localized consistency checks for those parts of the model that have changed. For a complex evolution of a model, consistency can then be established by incrementally performing those localized consistency checks associated to the transformation rules applied within the evolution.