D TOWARDS A SEMI-AUTOMATIC TRANSFORMATION PROCESS IN MDA Architecture and Methodology

Recently, Model Driven Engineering (MDE) approaches have been proposed for supporting the development, maintenance and evolution of software systems. Model driven architecture (MDA) from OMG (Object Management Group), "Software Factories" from Microsoft and the Eclipse Modelling Framework (EMF) from IBM are among the most representative MDE approaches. Nowadays, it is well recognized that model transformations are at the heart of these approaches and represent as a consequence one of the most important operations in MDE. However, despite the multitude of model transformation languages proposals emerging from university and industry, these transformations are often created manually. In this paper we propose in the first part an extended architecture that aims to semi-automate the process of transformation in the context of MDA. This architecture introduces mapping and matching as first class entities in the transformation process, represented by models and metamodels. In the second part, our architecture is enforced by a methodology which details the different steps leading to a semi-automatic transformation process. Finally, a classification of these different steps according to two main criteria is presented: how the steps are achieved (manual/automatic), and who is responsible for their achievement (expert, designer or software).