TY - JOUR A1 - Dyck, Johannes A1 - Giese, Holger A1 - Lambers, Leen T1 - Automatic verification of behavior preservation at the transformation level for relational model transformation JF - Software and systems modeling N2 - The correctness of model transformations is a crucial element for model-driven engineering of high-quality software. In particular, behavior preservation is an important correctness property avoiding the introduction of semantic errors during the model-driven engineering process. Behavior preservation verification techniques show some kind of behavioral equivalence or refinement between source and target model of the transformation. Automatic tool support is available for verifying behavior preservation at the instance level, i.e., for a given source and target model specified by the model transformation. However, until now there is no sound and automatic verification approach available at the transformation level, i.e., for all source and target models. In this article, we extend our results presented in earlier work (Giese and Lambers, in: Ehrig et al (eds) Graph transformations, Springer, Berlin, 2012) and outline a new transformation-level approach for the sound and automatic verification of behavior preservation captured by bisimulation resp.simulation for outplace model transformations specified by triple graph grammars and semantic definitions given by graph transformation rules. In particular, we first show how behavior preservation can be modeled in a symbolic manner at the transformation level and then describe that transformation-level verification of behavior preservation can be reduced to invariant checking of suitable conditions for graph transformations. We demonstrate that the resulting checking problem can be addressed by our own invariant checker for an example of a transformation between sequence charts and communicating automata. KW - Relational model transformation KW - Formal verification of behavior preservation KW - Behavioral equivalence and refinement KW - Bisimulation and simulation KW - Graph transformation KW - Triple graph grammars KW - Invariant checking Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-018-00706-9 SN - 1619-1366 SN - 1619-1374 VL - 18 IS - 5 SP - 2937 EP - 2972 PB - Springer CY - Heidelberg ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lambers, Leen A1 - Orejas, Fernando T1 - Transformation rules with nested application conditions BT - critical pairs, initial conflicts & minimality JF - Theoretical computer science N2 - Recently, initial conflicts were introduced in the framework of M-adhesive categories as an important optimization of critical pairs. In particular, they represent a proper subset such that each conflict is represented in a minimal context by a unique initial one. The theory of critical pairs has been extended in the framework of M-adhesive categories to rules with nested application conditions (ACs), restricting the applicability of a rule and generalizing the well-known negative application conditions. A notion of initial conflicts for rules with ACs does not exist yet. In this paper, on the one hand, we extend the theory of initial conflicts in the framework of M-adhesive categories to transformation rules with ACs. They represent a proper subset again of critical pairs for rules with ACs, and represent each conflict in a minimal context uniquely. They are moreover symbolic because we can show that in general no finite and complete set of conflicts for rules with ACs exists. On the other hand, we show that critical pairs are minimally M-complete, whereas initial conflicts are minimally complete. Finally, we introduce important special cases of rules with ACs for which we can obtain finite, minimally (M-)complete sets of conflicts. KW - Graph transformation KW - Critical pairs KW - Initial conflicts KW - Application KW - conditions Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tcs.2021.07.023 SN - 0304-3975 SN - 1879-2294 VL - 884 SP - 44 EP - 67 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER -