Model-Driven Development of Model Transformations

This thesis presents how evolving software models expressed in different formalisms can be kept consistent by means of an object-oriented integration of metamodeling, design by contract and graph transformation. It incrementally builds upon existing modeling languages to illustrate that the adoption of the new model-driven engineering paradigm does not force organizations to abandon their investments in more mature technologies. More specifically, this thesis shows how the new transformation languages introduced by the Model Driven Architecture standardization effort relate to fragments of the UML that have a well-known, object-oriented semantics. The proposed techniques have emerged from several case studies that involve a wide variety of transformation challenges. Therefore, the contributions are applicable for transformation modeling in general: at first, it is illustrated how model evolution can be supported; secondly, the technique is applied to transform conceptual models into more computer oriented ones; finally, the technique is applied and extended in the context of model synchronization.