Execution trace management to support dynamic V&V for executable DSMLs
Erwan Bousse · HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) · 2015
Dynamic verification and validation (V&V) techniques are required to ensure the correctness of executable models. Most of these techniques rely on the concept of execution trace, which is a sequence containing information about an execution. Therefore, to enable dynamic V&V of executable models conforming to any executable domain-specific modeling language (xDSML), it is crucial to provide efficient facilities to construct and manipulate all kinds of execution traces. To that effect, we first propose a scalable model cloning approach to conveniently construct generic execution traces using model clones. Using a random metamodel generator, we show that this approach is scalable in memory with little manipulation overhead. We then present a generative approach to define multidimensional and domain-specific execution trace metamodels, which consists in creating the execution trace data structure specific to an xDSML. Thereby, execution traces of models conforming to this xDSML can be efficiently captured and manipulated in a domain-specific way. We apply this approach to two existing dynamic V&V techniques, namely semantic differencing and omniscient debugging. We show that such a generated execution trace metamodel provides good usability and scalability for dynamic early V&V support for any xDSML. Our work have been implemented and integrated within the GEMOC Studio, which is a language and modeling workbench resulting from the eponym international initiative.