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DPF Workbench: a multi-level language workbench for MDE

2013; Estonian Academy Publishers; Volume: 62; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3176/proc.2013.1.02

1736-7530

Yngve Lamo, Xi Wang, Florian Mantz, Ø Bech, A Sandven, Adrian Rutle,

Advanced Software Engineering Methodologies

This paper presents the DPF Workbench, a language workbench for (meta)modelling and code generation.The DPF Workbench includes a graphical specification editor for the Diagram Predicate Framework (DPF), which provides a graph-based formalization of (meta)modelling and model transformation.The tool offers functionality for fully diagrammatic specifications of domain-specific modelling languages.Moreover, the DPF Workbench supports the development of metamodelling hierarchies with an arbitrary number of metalevels; i.e. each model at a metalevel can be used as a metamodel for the metalevel below.The DPF Workbench facilitates the generation of domain-specific diagrammatic editors out of these metamodels.The conformance relations between adjacent metalevels are checked using typing morphisms and validation of diagrammatic constraints.In addition, the DPF Workbench provides a signature editor for the definition of software constraints and their corresponding validators.The code generator is a newly added component that facilitates the generation of software from models defined in the DPF Workbench.The features of the DPF Workbench are illustrated by a running example presenting a metamodelling hierarchy for business process modelling and sketching how these models can be transformed to programs by the code generation facility.