Behavioral consistency in multi-modeling

Abstract

Multiple heterogeneous interacting systems are needed to realize the requirements of complex domains. Describing the interactions between these systems and checking their global behavioral consistency is a general, well-known challenge in software engineering. To address this challenge, model-driven software engineering utilizes abstract representations of the constituting systems and their interactions, resulting in a multi-model representing the overall system. In such a multi-modeling setting, global consistency requirements must be satisfied by a set of heterogeneously typed models to guarantee a desired global behavior. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for behavioral consistency management of heterogeneous multi-models. The approach introduces a workflow in which we (i) define which behavioral models in the multi-model may interact, (ii) specify consistency requirements as global behavioral properties, (iii) align the individual models by specifying how they interact, (iv) generate a formal specification of the global behavior, and finally, (v) check the global behavioral properties, which should be satisfied by the multi-model. Our approach is decoupled from the particular formalism used in the generated formal specification, and we currently support graph transformations (Groove) and rewriting logic (Maude).