Leila Samimi-Dehkordi

Leila Samimi-Dehkordi

PHD

Alumni

Start: Sep. 2012
Finish: Apr. 2019
Thesis Title: Model Driven Development of Bidirectional Transformations
Supervisor: Dr. Bahman Zamani     Advisor: Dr. Shekoufeh Kolahdouz-Rahimi
Current Position: Assistant Professor at Shahrekord University
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About:
Leila Samimi-Dehkordi received her B.Sc. in Software Engineering from Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) in March 2008 and an M.Sc. in Algorithms and Computation from University of Tehran (UT) in January 2011. She was a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Engineering at University of Isfahan (UI) under supervision of Dr. Bahman Zamani and Dr. Shekoufeh Kolahdouz-Rahimi from 2012, and finally defended her Ph.D. thesis on April 2019. Her Ph.D. research was focusing on Model-Driven Development, Bidirectional Model Transformations, Traceability, and Change Propagations. She is a member of Model-Driven Software Engineering Research Group (MDSERG) at University of Isfahan.

 

Thesis Abstract:
Model transformation is the heart and soul of the Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) paradigm that produces one model from another. In most of the practical cases, both source and target models are changed independently. Bidirectional transformation (Bx) provides a mechanism to re-establish this inter-model consistency. Bx approaches suffer from several challenges, such as complex ambiguities in defining the syntax and semantics of the Bx language, low learnability, mismanagement of update conflicts, and outdated transformation tools. To alleviate the aforementioned drawbacks, we propose a novel Bx approach, called EVL+Strace, which is built using the Epsilon Validation Language (EVL) on a domain-specific trace metamodel (Strace). The EVL language used in the proposed approach is a hybrid language, which does not have the ambiguities of the declarative languages. Moreover, it has an easy-to-learn syntax. EVL+Strace provides an interactive transformation system to manage update conflicts, which can transform user updates on models from source to target and vice versa, simultaneously. It is developed based on Epsilon, a comprehensive and actively updated framework, that reduces the possibility of obsoleteness. The applied trace metamodel should be specific to the domains of source and target metamodels that prevents illegitimate trace elements. Additionally, it enables developers to specify the transformation concepts more precisely. To demonstrate the place of EVL+Strace among Bx approaches, it is compared to four well-known bidirectional approaches based on a well-defined feature model. The results of the comparison show that EVL+Strace is the first practical interactive approach that can provide important bidirectional features, such as preservation and propagation. Since writing the Bx code from scratch is an error-prone task, we propose to use the model-driven techniques to generate the specification components of EVL+Strace including the trace metamodel and transformation code. To that end, an Eclipse-based toolkit, called MoDEBiTE, is developed to semi-automatically produce the EVL+Strace artifacts. To show the validity of EVL+Strace and applicability of MoDEBiTE, a comprehensive validation methodology on 10 case studies is performed. The results show the usefulness of MoDEBiTE in developing transformations and the validity of EVL+Strace in preserving the inter-model consistency.

 

Projects

 

Papers in English

 

Papers in Persian

 

‏Tutorial Videos