Model Transformations for Improving Multi-agent System Development in INGENIAS

摘要

Agent-Oriented Software Engineering is currently deeply influenced by the techniques and concepts of Model-Driven Development. In this context, the use of automated transformations to support software processes is not explored enough. Models are supposed to be created following the activities of a process, which standard transformations could partially perform. The reduced use of transformations for this purpose is largely due to the high effort required for their development. To overcome this limitation, this paper presents an algorithm to generate model transformations by-example. It overcomes two common limitations of these approaches: the generation of many-to-many transformation between arbitrary graphs of elements; dealing with transformation languages that do not directly support graphs of elements in their source or target models. The algorithm has been implemented for the ATLAS transformation language in the MTGenerator tool. The paper also illustrates how to use this tool to facilitate the support for a software process, in this case for the INGENIAS methodology.