Behavioral consistency in multi-modeling

By: Tim Kräuter, Harald König, Adrian Rutle, Yngve Lamo, Patrick Stünkel

Abstract

Multiple heterogeneous interacting systems are needed to realize the requirements of complex domains. Describing the interactions between these systems and checking their global behavioral consistency is a general, well-known challenge in software engineering. To address this challenge, model-driven software engineering utilizes abstract representations of the constituting systems and their interactions, resulting in a multi-model representing the overall system. In such a multi-modeling setting, global consistency requirements must be satisfied by a set of heterogeneously typed models to guarantee a desired global behavior. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for behavioral consistency management of heterogeneous multi-models. The approach introduces a workflow in which we (i) define which behavioral models in the multi-model may interact, (ii) specify consistency requirements as global behavioral properties, (iii) align the individual models by specifying how they interact, (iv) generate a formal specification of the global behavior, and finally, (v) check the global behavioral properties, which should be satisfied by the multi-model. Our approach is decoupled from the particular formalism used in the generated formal specification, and we currently support graph transformations (Groove) and rewriting logic (Maude).

Keywords

Global behavioral consistency, Consistency verification, Multi-modeling, Heterogeneous models, Graph transformation, Rewriting Logic.

Cite as:

Tim Kräuter, Harald König, Adrian Rutle, Yngve Lamo, Patrick Stünkel, “Behavioral consistency in multi-modeling”, Journal of Object Technology, Volume 22, no. 2 (July 2023), pp. 2:1-15, doi:10.5381/jot.2023.22.2.a9.