Title
Iterative development of consistency-preserving rule-based refactorings
Abstract
A model refactoring does not only need to ensure behavior preservation. First of all, it needs to ensure that specific well-formedness constraints of the modeling language under consideration are preserved (consistency preservation). The consistency of model refactorings can be ensured by runtime checks. However, this means that not the developer of the refactorings but the user is confronted with the problem. In this paper we present an approach to statically check for consistency preservation of rule-based refactorings at design time. Thereby, refactoring rules describe which side-effects may take place on the model to be refactored. We formalize rule-based refactorings using graph transformation and consistency using graph constraints. We extend a verification technique capable of proving statically that refactoring rule applications preserve consistency. By automatically computing meaningful counterexamples, this technique allows for the iterative development of refactoring rules guaranteeing consistency preservation. We demonstrate the approach for common Java refactorings applied to a fine grained EMF model and can show that bugs that were present in refactorings of former Eclipse versions could have been avoided using our approach.
Year
DOI
Venue
2011
10.1007/978-3-642-21732-6_9
ICMT
Keywords
Field
DocType
rule-based refactorings,model refactorings,consistency preservation,model refactoring,fine grained emf model,graph transformation,graph constraint,iterative development,behavior preservation,refactoring rule application,refactoring rule,java,verification,modeling language,rule based,side effect
Rule-based system,Programming language,Iterative and incremental development,Model driven development,Computer science,Modeling language,Graph rewriting,Model refactoring,Java
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
11
0.55
13
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Basil Becker183730.61
Leen Lambers239731.22
Johannes Dyck3202.68
Stefanie Birth4110.55
Holger Giese52345164.90