Recovering Use Case Diagrams from Object Oriented Code: An MDA-based Approach

Abstract

Modernization of legacy systems requires the existence of technical frameworks for information integration and tool interoperability that allow managing new platform technologies, design techniques and processes. MDA (Model Driven Architecture), adopted by the OMG (Object Management Group), is aligned with this requirement. Reverse engineering techniques play a crucial role in system modernization. In light of these issues, this article describes a framework to reverse engineering MDA models from object oriented code. This framework distinguishes three different abstraction levels linked to models, metamodels and formal specifications. At model level, transformations are based on static and dynamic analysis. At metamodel level, transformations are specified as OCL (Object Constraint Language) contracts between MOF (Meta Object Facility) metamodels which control the consistency of these transformations. The level of formal specification includes algebraic specifications of MOF metamodels and metamodel-based transformations. This article shows how to reverse engineering use case diagrams from Java code in the MDA context focusing on transformations at model and metamodel levels. We validate our approach by using Eclipse Modeling Framework, Ecore metamodels and ATL (Atlas Transformation Language).