Model Interchange Testing: A Process and a Case Study

Modeling standards by the Object Management Group (OMG) enable the interchange of models between tools. In practice, the success of such interchange has been severely limited due to ambiguities and inconsistencies in the standards and lack of rigorous testing of tools’ interchange capabilities. This motivated a number of OMG members, including tool vendors and users, to form a Model Interchange Working Group (MIWG) to test and improve model interchange between tools. In this paper, we report on the activities of the MIWG, presenting its testing process and highlighting its design decisions and challenges. We also report on a case study where the MIWG has used its process to test the interchange of UML and SysML models. We make observations, present statistics and discuss lessons learned. We conclude that the MIWG has indeed defined a rigorous, effective and semi-automated process for model interchange testing, which has resulted in more reliable interchange of models between participating tools.