Semantic Analysis of Domain Model Evolution in Model-Driven Software Development
Constantin Buschhaus, Lukas Netz, Bernhard Rumpe⋆, Max Stachon, Sebastian Stüber · 2025
Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) aims to improve the development of software systems by utilizing models as primary source artifacts and leveraging automation, such as model-to-code translation. Since models serve as primary source artifacts, their evolution throughout the development process is a critical concern. To better understand the changes made to models, difference analyses can be employed. However, merely highlighting syntactic differences between subsequent model versions may be insufficient for comprehensively analyzing the history of a domain model in a model-driven development process. We propose an approach that analyzes the differences between subsequent model versions at the abstract syntax level and assesses their implications on the model’s semantics. This approach is integrated into a toolchain that aggregates and visualizes changes across the entire model development history. In this paper, we apply this integrated analysis to the domain model of MaCoCo, a business information system developed using model-driven methods. We utilize the visualization of the aggregated difference analysis to identify anomalies in the evolution of the model and discuss their implications for the development history of MaCoCo.