Semantic Model Differencing Utilizing Behavioral Semantics Specifications

摘要

Identifying differences among models is a crucial prerequisite for several development and change management tasks in model-driven engineering. The majority of existing model differencing approaches focus on revealing syntactic differences which can only approximate semantic differences among models. Significant advances in semantic model differencing have been recently made by Maoz et al. who propose semantic diff operators for UML class and activity diagrams. In this paper, we present a generic semantic differencing approach which can be instantiated to realize semantic diff operators for specific modeling languages. Our approach utilizes the behavioral semantics specification of the considered modeling language, which enables to execute models and capture execution traces representing the models' semantic interpretation. Based on this semantic interpretation, semantic differences can be revealed.