Writing bidirectional model transformations as intentional updates

Abstract

Model synchronization plays an important role in modeldriven software development. Bidirectional model transformation approaches provide techniques for developers to specify the bidirectional relationship between source and target models, while keeping related models synchronized for free. Since models of interest are usually not in a one-to-one correspondence, this synchronization process is inherently ambiguous. Nevertheless, existing bidirectional model transformation tools focus mainly on enforcing consistency and provide developers only limited control over how models are synchronized, solving the latent ambiguity via default strategies whose behavior is unclear to developers. In this paper, we propose a novel approach in which developers write update programs that succinctly describe how a target model can be used to update a source model, such that the bidirectional behavior is fully determined. The new approach mitigates the unpredictability of existing solutions, by enabling a finer and more transparent control of what a bidirectional transformation does, and suggests a research direction for building more robust bidirectional model transformation tools. Copyright © 2014 ACM.