[news.eclipse.modeling.gmt.amw] Thesis defense

["Jean Bezivin" <Jean.Bezivin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The concept of "Model Weaving" (not to be confused with "Aspect Weaving" in 
AOP) has been proposed by Marcos Didonet del Fabro in several papers and 
illustrated by the AMW Eclipse tool.  It is now a well established idea, 
used to solve a number of problems like abstract specification of 
transformations, data integration, ontology alignment, version evolution, 
traceability management, etc.

Marcos will defend a PhD thesis on this subject at the University of Nantes 
on September 11th, 2007. As usual the thesis defense is open and public.

The title of the thesis is: "Metadata management using model weaving and 
model transformation".

Abstract:
Nowadays, the interaction and interoperability between different data 
sources is a major
concern in many organizations. The different formats of data, APIs, and 
architectures
increases the incompatibilities, in a way the interoperability and 
interaction between
components becomes a very difficult task. Model driven engineering (MDE) is 
a paradigm
that enables diminishing interoperability problems by considering every 
entity as a model.
 MDE platforms are composed of different kinds of models. One of the most 
important kinds
of models are transformation models, which are used to define fixed 
operations between
different models. In addition to fixed transformation operations, there are 
other kinds of
interactions and relationships between models. A complete MDE solution must 
be capable of
handling different kinds of relationships. Until now, most part of research 
concentrated
on studying transformation languages. This means additional efforts must be 
undertaken to
study these relationships and their implications on a MDE platform. This 
thesis studies
different forms of relationships between models' elements. We show through 
extensive
related work from different domains that the major limitation of current 
solutions is the
lack of genericity, extensibility and adaptability. We present a generic MDE 
solution for
relationship management called model weaving. Model weaving proposes to 
capture different
kinds of relationships between model elements in a weaving model. A weaving 
model conforms
to extensions of a core weaving metamodel that supports basic relationship 
management.
After proposing the unification of the conceptual foundations related to 
model weaving, we
show how weaving models and transformation models are used as a generic 
approach for data
interoperability. The weaving models are used to produce model 
transformations. Moreover,
we present an adaptive framework for creating weaving models in a 
semi-automatic way. We
validate our approach by developing a generic and adaptive tool called ATLAS 
Model Weaver
(AMW), and by implementing several use cases from different application 
scenarios.

Keywords: model weaving, model transformations, data interoperability, model 
driven
engineering, matching transformations