Bidirectional Mapping between Architecture Model and Code for Synchronization

Abstract

UML state machines and composite structure models are efficient to design the behavior and structure of architectures. In Model Driven Engineering (MDE), code can be automatically generated from the models. Nevertheless, current UML tools only produce skeleton code which is then fine-tuned by programmers. The modifications in code, which may violate the architecture correctness, must be synchronized with the model to make architecture and code consistent. However, current approaches cannot handle the synchronization when there is a significant abstraction gap between architecture and code. This paper proposes to ease synchronization between model and code, through a bidirectional mapping between code and architecture specified by UML composite structure and state machine. The proposed mapping is a means for a synchronization mechanism proposed in our previous work, which allows concurrent modifications made in model and code, and keeps them synchronized. We propose an evaluation plan for the approach and expose preliminary experimental results.