Constraint-based Run-time State Migration for Live Modeling

Ulyana Tikhonova (1) , Jouke Stoel (1, 2) , Tijs van Der Storm (1, 3) , Thomas Degueule (1)

1 CWI - Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica
2 TU/e - Eindhoven University of Technology [Eindhoven]
3 University of Groningen [Groningen]

Live modeling enables modelers to incrementally update models as they are running and get immediate feedback about the impact of their changes. Changes introduced in a model may trigger inconsistencies between the model and its run-time state (e.g., deleting the current state in a statemachine); effectively requiring to migrate the run-time state to comply with the updated model. In this paper, we introduce an approach that enables to automatically migrate such run-time state based on declarative constraints defined by the language designer. We illustrate the approach using Nextep, a meta-modeling language for defining invariants and migration constraints on run-time state models. When a model changes, Nextep employs model finding techniques, backed by a solver, to automatically infer a new run-time model that satisfies the declared constraints. We apply Nextep to define migration strategies for two DSLs, and report on its expressiveness and performance.

Domaines: Génie logiciel [cs.SE]

Ulyana Tikhonova, Jouke Stoel, Tijs van Der Storm, Thomas Degueule. Constraint-based Run-time State Migration for Live Modeling. SLE 2018 - 11th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering, Nov 2018, Boston, MA, USA, United States. ⟨10.1145/3276604.3276611⟩. ⟨hal-01896207⟩