A Generic Tool for Tracing Executions Back to a DSML s Operational Semantics

Benoît Combemale, Laure Gonnord, Vlad Rusu. A Generic Tool for Tracing Executions Back to a DSML s Operational Semantics. Preprint 2011.

Abstract

The increasing complexity of software development requires rigorously defined domain specific modeling languages (DSML). Model-driven engineering (\mde) allows users to define a DSML’s syntax in terms of metamodels. The behaviour of a language can also be described, either operationally, or via transformations to other languages (e.g., by code generation). If the first approach requires to redefine analysis tools for each DSML (simulator, model-checker…), the second approach allows to reuse existing tools in the targeted language. However, the second approach (also called translational semantics) imply that the results (e.g., a program crash log, or a counterexample returned by a model checker) may not be straightforward to interpret by the users of a DSML. We propose in this paper a generic tool for formally tracing such analysis/execution results back to the original DSML’s syntax and operational semantics, and we illustrate it on xSPEM, a timed process modeling language.