Towards rigorously faking bidirectional model transformations

• Main Authors: POSKITT, Christopher M., DODDS, Mike, PAIGE, Richard F., RENSINK, Arend
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2014
• Subjects: Software Engineering
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/4913; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/5916/viewcontent/PoskittDPR.AMT.2014.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Bidirectional model transformations (bx) are mechanisms for automatically restoring consistency between multiple concurrently modified models. They are, however, challenging to implement; many model transformation languages not supporting them at all. In this paper, we propose an approach for automatically obtaining the consistency guarantees of bx without the complexities of a bx language. First, we show how to "fake" true bidirectionality using pairs of unidirectional transformations and inter-model consistency constraints in Epsilon. Then, we propose to automatically verify that these transformations are consistency preserving – thus indistinguishable from true bx – by defining translations to graph rewrite rules and nested conditions, and leveraging recent proof calculi for graph transformation verification.