Paper Info
Title
Assessing the Impact of Meta-Model Evolution - A Measure and Its Automotive Application
Abstract
Domain-specific meta-models play an important role in the design of large software systems by defining language for the architectural models. Such common modeling languages are particularly important if multiple actors are involved in the development process as they assure interoperability between modeling tools used by different actors. The main objective of this paper is to facilitate the adoption of new domain-specific meta-model versions, or a subset of the new architectural features they support, by the architectural modeling tools used by different actors in the development of large software systems. In order to achieve this objective, we developed a simple measure of meta-model evolution (named NoC—Number of Changes) that captures atomic modification between different versions of the analyzed meta-model. We evaluated the NoC measure on the evolution of the AUTOSAR meta-model, a domain-specific meta-model used in the design of automotive system architectures. The evaluation shows that the measure can be used as an indicator of effort needed to update meta-model-based tools to support different actors in modeling new architectural features. Our detailed results show the impact of 14 new AUTOSAR features on the modeling tools used by the main actors in the automotive development process. We validated our results by finding a significant correlation between the results of the NoC measure and the actual effort needed to support these features in the modeling tools reported by the modeling practitioners from four AUTOSAR tool vendors and the AUTOSAR tooling team at Volvo Cars. Generally, our study shows that quantitative analysis of domain-specific meta-model evolution using a simple measure such as NoC can be used as an indicator of the required updates in the meta-model-based tools that are needed to support new meta-model versions. However, our study also shows that qualitative analysis that may include an inspection of the actual meta-model changes is needed for more accurate assessment.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1007/s10270-017-0601-1
Software and Systems Modeling
Keywords
Field
DocType
Domain-specific meta-models, Modeling tools, Architectural features, Software evolution, Measurement, Automotive software, AUTOSAR
Systems engineering,Interoperability,Computer science,Modeling language,Software system,AUTOSAR,Automotive software,Software evolution,Metamodeling,Automotive industry
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
18.0
2.0
1619-1374
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
18
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Darko Durisic1234.93
Miroslaw Staron248652.25
Miroslaw Staron348652.25
Matthias Tichy4104366.30
jorgen hansson542135.04