related research: Incremental Transformation and Analysis
related research: Refinement from Software Requirements to Architecture
related research: Architecture and Design Recovery (reverse engineering)
related research: Software Architecture and UML

► Model transformation

Designers can easily become overwhelmed with details when dealing with large-scale models. Our work thus presents an approach for automated abstraction that allows designers to "zoom out" on class diagrams to investigate and reason about their bigger picture. The approach is based on a large number of abstraction rules that individually are not very powerful, but when used together, can abstract complex class structures quickly. Our work is based on abstraction rules and an algorithm for applying them. The technique was validated on over a dozen models where it was shown to be well-suited for model understanding, consistency checking, and reverse engineering.

Relevant Publications

·         Automatically Discovering Transitive Relationships in Class Diagrams

·         Automated Abstraction of Class Diagrams

·         Compositional and Relational Reasoning During Class Abstraction

·         Bridging Models Across the Software Lifecycle

·         Software Model Connectors: Bridging Models across the Software Lifecycle

·         Rose/Architect-a tool to visualize architecture

·         Consistent Architectural Refinement and Evolution using the Unified Modeling Language

·         Maintaining Life Perspectives during the Refinement of UML Class Structures

·         Semantic Abstraction Rules for Class Diagrams

Relevant Tools

·         Class Abstraction Tool

·         UML/Analyzer Tool

Relevant Related Events

·         none