Metamodel critics approach for designing metamodels in model-driven software engineering
The advances of Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) or Model-Driven Software Engineering (MDSE) have motivated the use of metamodeling approach in the development of software systems. Metamodeling is the key concept in MDSE approach that describes how domain models are organized: their ontology, synt...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/112211/ http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/112211/1/FSKTM%202021%2014%20-%20IR.pdf |
| Summary: | The advances of Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) or Model-Driven Software
Engineering (MDSE) have motivated the use of metamodeling approach in the
development of software systems. Metamodeling is the key concept in MDSE
approach that describes how domain models are organized: their ontology,
syntax and semantic. The model’s abstraction levels, and relations of levels are
also defined via metamodeling approach. Many software developers applied the
MDSE via metamodel-based approach for software development in various
domains. However, one of the challenges in MDSE is the quality of the
metamodels. A study reported that metamodels possibly have quality defects
because metamodel design is related to the cognitive ability of metamodel
designers. Hence, the research problems in metamodel design includes syntax
errors, poor-constructs, over complex-constructs, semantic defects, and poor
quality of the design. Some of the problems in metamodel design includes syntax
errors, poor-constructs, over complex-constructs and semantic defects. Many
researchers have proposed several guidelines and rules to assist the software
developers on how to design a quality metamodel. However, an automated
approach to check and detect the errors in metamodel design is still lacking.
Thus, in this research, a critic-based approach is proposed to detect metamodel
design errors in an automated way and provide suggestions to improve the
metamodel design. The research scope is focused on designing a metamodel
design using Unified Modeling Language (UML) Class Diagram notation. The
aim of this research is to integrate a critic-based approach within modelling tool
to assist the software developers in designing a quality metamodel design in
MDSE.
The research consists of several phases to achieve the research aim. The early
phase of this research was initiated by identifying the requirements of a quality
metamodel design via literature review analysis. Several rules and guidelines in
designing quality metamodel as proposed by previous researchers are obtained
in the initial phase. In the intermediate phase, metamodel critics are created
based on the rules and guidelines of a quality metamodel. A prototype to
demonstrate the proof of concept for metamodel critics was developed. Several
exemplars of metamodels are used to demonstrate the application of metamodel
critics. The final phase of this research is to perform a user evaluation to assess
the usability and effectiveness of metamodel critic approach in designing a
quality metamodel.
The main contribution of this research is the mechanism to detect metamodel
design errors and provide suggestions for improvement of metamodel design in
MDSE via critic-based approach. Another important contribution is the
development of a metamodel critic tool that can be applied to assist software
developers in designing a quality metamodel using the Unified Modelling
Language (UML) notations. |
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