Tracing evolution changes of software artifacts through model synchronization

Abstract

Software evolution encompasses all activities related to engineering software, from its inception to retirement. Propagating change across software models that are altered due to maintenance activities is a first step towards maintaining consistency between architectural design, and implementation models. Model synchronization techniques initially presented within the context of model driven architecture provide an instrument for achieving change trace-ability and consistency. We present a framework whereby software artifacts at different levels of abstraction such as architecture diagrams, object models, and abstract syntax trees are represented by graph-based MOF compliant models that can be synchronized using model transformations. In such a framework model dependencies are implicitly encoded using transformation rules and an equivalence relation is used to evaluate when two models become synchronized.