Towards Checking Consistency-Breaking Updates between Models and Generated Artifacts
MohammadAmin Zaheri, Michalis Famelis, Eugene Syriani · 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems Companion (MODELS-C) · 2021
Model-based Low-Code systems rely on high-level specifications (models) to generate all artifacts of the resulting software. Such artifacts can be code, schemas, as well as data, and metadata. Maintaining consistency between models and artifacts generated from them is at the core of generative approaches in software engineering. Existing approaches have focused on the consistency problem between specific pairs of artifacts, such as models and their metamodels, class diagrams and generated code, and database schemas and data. Instead, we envision a holistic approach for maintaining the consistency that encompasses all generated artifacts. In this paper, we motivate our approach with a case study from a real model-driven software system. We identify scenarios where updates to either models or generated artifacts break consistency and outline a set of challenges and future research directions.