Meta-Tool for Model-Driven Verification of Constraints Satisfaction

The work presented in this paper addresses the general problem of verifying if models structurally compliant to a given meta-model also satisfy the constraints specified on it, whether integrity or tool-specific ones. For accomplishing such constraints satisfaction verification, a completely model-driven strategy is proposed, whose core idea is to perform the checking by applying an M2M transformation to the model to verify, hence yielding a model which represents the verification result. This output model encapsulates every detected constraint violation, allowing their later manifestation, automatic fixing or any other kind of processing. Besides providing a meta-model for formalizing those diagnostic models gathering constraint violations, the presented methodology enables the systematic and straightforward development of verification tools, each one targeting a given couple of domain meta-model and constraints set. Therefore, it supports the actual objective of this work: A strategy for the development of a generic tool for the verification, suitable for any constraints set or meta-model. The functional foundation for designing such a generic tool is that it will be based on a generator (meta-tool) for the on-the-fly creation of the required specific tool (M2M checking transformation), thanks to the Higher Order Transformation (HOT) technique.