skip to main content
10.1145/2000410.2000412acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesiwmcpConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Assessing the quality of model-comparison tools: a method and a benchmark data set

Authors Info & Claims
Published:30 June 2011Publication History

ABSTRACT

Model comparison is an important aspect of model driven software engineering. In particular, exploring the evolution of a model would be impossible without means for comparing different versions of that model. However, the techniques and tools for model comparison are still being perfected for practical application. Moreover, there exist no systematic methods and no controlled benchmarks that could be used for assessing the quality of tools for model comparison.

In this paper, we describe a systematic method for assessing the quality of model-comparison tools, and we present a data set to be used for controlled assessment experiments. Additionally, we use our method, and the specified data, to asses the quality of two model-comparison tools, namely EMFCompare and RCVDiff. The results of the experiments show that, in generic cases, both tools exhibit similar performance, and that both tools are of similar quality, though there are some notable difference in the details.

The defined method, the selected dataset, and the results obtained by assessing the two mentioned tools, constitute a benchmark for model-comparison tools.

References

  1. ATL transformation language. http://www.eclipse.org/atl/ (Viewed January 2011).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  2. ATL transformations zoo. http://www.eclipse.org/m2m/atl/atlTransformations/ (Viewed January 2011).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  3. ATLAN metamodel zoo. http://www.emn.fr/z--info/atlanmod/index.php/Ecore (Viewed January 2011).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  4. A benchmark set of experimental data. http://www.win.tue.nl/~zprotic/benchmark.html (Viewed March 2011).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  5. CIF: The compositional interchange format for hybrid systems. http://se.wtb.tue.nl/sewiki/cif/start (Viewed March 2011).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  6. Cumulative frequency analysis with probability distributions. http://www.waterlog.info/cumfreq.htm (Viewed January 2011).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  7. Eclipse. www.eclipse.org (Viewed June 2010).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  8. Ecore. download.eclipse.org/modeling/emf/emf/javadoc/2.5.0/org/eclipse/emf/ecore/package-summary.html#details (Viewed June 2010).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  9. EMF compare project. http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/EMFCompare (Viewed October 2009).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  10. Epsilon Transformation Language. http://www.eclipse.org/gmt/epsilon/doc/etl/ (Viewed April 2011).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  11. Fujaba. http://www.fujaba.de (Viewed March 2011).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  12. Metaobject facility. www.omg.org/mof (Viewed June 2010).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  13. Xtext. http://www.eclipse.org/Xtext/ (Viewed March 2011).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  14. D. A. v. Beek, P. Collins, D. E. Nadales, J. Rooda, and R. R. H. Schiffelers. New concepts in the abstract format of the compositional interchange format. In A. Giua, C. Mahuela, M. Silva, and J. Zaytoon, editors, 3rd IFAC Conference on Analysis and Design of Hybrid Systems, pages 250--255, Zaragoza, Spain, 2009.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  15. A. Cicchetti, D. D. Ruscio, R. Eramo, and A. Pierantonio. A metamodel independent approach to difference representation. Journal of Object Technology, pages 165--185, 2007.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  16. K. Garcés, F. Jouault, P. Cointe, and J. Bézivin. Managing model adaptation by precise detection of metamodel changes. In Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Model Driven Architecture - Foundations and Applications, ECMDA-FA '09, pages 34--49, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2009. Springer-Verlag. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  17. M. Herrmannsdoerfer, S. D. Vermolen, and G. Wachsmuth. An extensive catalog of operators for the coupled evolution of metamodels and models. In M. van den Brand, B. Malloy, and S. Staab, editors, Software Language Engineering, Third International Conference, SLE 2010, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, October 12--13, 2010, Revised Selected Papers, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, 2010. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  18. ISO - International Organization for Standardization. International Standard ISO/IEC 25000 - Software engineering -- Software product Quality Requirements and Evaluation (SQuaRE). Geneva, Switzerland, 2005.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  19. U. Kelter, J. Wehren, and J. Niere. A generic difference algorithm for uml models. In P. Liggesmeyer, K. Pohl, and M. Goedicke, editors, Software Engineering 2005, volume 64 of LNI, pages 105--116. GI, 2005.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  20. D. S. Kolovos. Establishing correspondences between models with the epsilon comparison language. In ECMDA-FA '09: Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Model Driven Architecture - Foundations and Applications, pages 146--157, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2009. Springer-Verlag. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  21. D. S. Kolovos, D. Di Ruscio, A. Pierantonio, and R. F. Paige. Different models for model matching: An analysis of approaches to support model differencing. ICSE Workshop on Comparison and Versioning of Software Models, pages 1--6, 2009. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  22. P. Konemann. Model-independent differences. In Proceedings of the 2009 ICSE Workshop on Comparison and Versioning of Software Models (CVSM '09), pages 37--42, Washington, DC, USA, 2009. IEEE Computer Society. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  23. A. Mougenot, A. Darrasse, X. Blanc, and M. Soria. Uniform random generation of huge metamodel instances. In Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Model Driven Architecture - Foundations and Applications, ECMDA-FA '09, pages 130--145, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2009. Springer-Verlag. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  24. H. Oliveira, L. Murta, and C. Werner. Odyssey-vcs: a flexible version control system for uml model elements. In Proceedings of the 12th international workshop on Software configuration management, SCM '05, pages 1--16, New York, NY, USA, 2005. ACM. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  25. M. van den Brand, Z. Protić, and T. Verhoeff. Fine-grained metamodel-assisted model comparison. In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Model Comparison in Practice, IWMCP '10, pages 11--20, New York, NY, USA, 2010. ACM. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  26. M. van den Brand, Z. Protić, and T. Verhoeff. Generic tool for visualization of model differences. In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Model Comparison in Practice, IWMCP '10, pages 66--75, New York, NY, USA, 2010. ACM. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  27. M. van den Brand, Z. Protić, and T. Verhoeff. Rcvdiff - a stand-alone tool for representation, calculation and visualization of model differences. 2010. ME 2010 - International Workshop on Models and Evolution.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  28. Z. Xing and E. Stroulia. UMLDiff: an algorithm for object-oriented design differencing. In Proceedings of the 20th IEEE/ACM international Conference on Automated software engineering, ASE '05, pages 54--65, New York, NY, USA, 2005. ACM. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library

Index Terms

  1. Assessing the quality of model-comparison tools: a method and a benchmark data set

        Recommendations

        Comments

        Login options

        Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

        Sign in
        • Published in

          cover image ACM Other conferences
          IWMCP '11: Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Model Comparison in Practice
          June 2011
          43 pages
          ISBN:9781450306683
          DOI:10.1145/2000410

          Copyright © 2011 ACM

          Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

          Publisher

          Association for Computing Machinery

          New York, NY, United States

          Publication History

          • Published: 30 June 2011

          Permissions

          Request permissions about this article.

          Request Permissions

          Check for updates

          Qualifiers

          • research-article

        PDF Format

        View or Download as a PDF file.

        PDF

        eReader

        View online with eReader.

        eReader