TY - JOUR
T1 - Automatic generation of UML profile graphical editors for Papyrus
AU - Wei, Ran
AU - Zolotas, Athanasios
AU - Hoyos Rodriguez, Horacio
AU - Gerasimou, Simos
AU - Kolovos, Dimitrios S.
AU - Paige, Richard F.
N1 - © The Author(s) 2020
PY - 2020/8/11
Y1 - 2020/8/11
N2 - UML profiles offer an intuitive way for developers to build domain-specific modelling languages by reusing and extending UML concepts. Eclipse Papyrus is a powerful open-source UML modelling tool which supports UML profiling. However, with power comes complexity, implementing non-trivial UML profiles and their supporting editors in Papyrus typically requires the developers to handcraft and maintain a number of interconnected models through a loosely guided, labour-intensive and error-prone process. We demonstrate how metamodel annotations and model transformation techniques can help manage the complexity of Papyrus in the creation of UML profiles and their supporting editors. We present Jorvik, an open-source tool that implements the proposed approach. We illustrate its functionality with examples, and we evaluate our approach by comparing it against manual UML profile specification and editor implementation using a non-trivial enterprise modelling language (Archimate) as a case study. We also perform a user study in which developers are asked to produce identical editors using both Papyrus and Jorvik demonstrating the substantial productivity and maintainability benefits that Jorvik delivers.
AB - UML profiles offer an intuitive way for developers to build domain-specific modelling languages by reusing and extending UML concepts. Eclipse Papyrus is a powerful open-source UML modelling tool which supports UML profiling. However, with power comes complexity, implementing non-trivial UML profiles and their supporting editors in Papyrus typically requires the developers to handcraft and maintain a number of interconnected models through a loosely guided, labour-intensive and error-prone process. We demonstrate how metamodel annotations and model transformation techniques can help manage the complexity of Papyrus in the creation of UML profiles and their supporting editors. We present Jorvik, an open-source tool that implements the proposed approach. We illustrate its functionality with examples, and we evaluate our approach by comparing it against manual UML profile specification and editor implementation using a non-trivial enterprise modelling language (Archimate) as a case study. We also perform a user study in which developers are asked to produce identical editors using both Papyrus and Jorvik demonstrating the substantial productivity and maintainability benefits that Jorvik delivers.
KW - Model-driven engineering
KW - Papyrus
KW - UML profiling
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85089299686&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10270-020-00813-6
DO - 10.1007/s10270-020-00813-6
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85089299686
SN - 1619-1366
JO - Software and Systems Modeling
JF - Software and Systems Modeling
ER -