Generating repairs for inconsistent models

Abstract

AbstractThere are many repair alternatives for resolving model inconsistencies, each involving one or more model changes. Enumerating them all could overwhelm the developer because the number of possible repairs can grow exponentially. To address this problem, this paper focuses on the immediate cause of an inconsistency. By focusing on the cause, we can generate a repair tree with a subset of repair actions focusing on fixing this cause. This strategy identifies model elements that must be repaired, as opposed to additional model elements that may or may not have to be repaired later. Furthermore, our approach can provide an ownership-based filter for filtering repairs that modify model elements not owned by a developer. This filtering can further reduce the repair possibilities, aiding the developer when choosing repairs to be performed. We evaluated our approach on 24 UML models and four Java systems, using 17 UML consistency rules and 14 Java consistency rules. The evaluation data contained 39,683 inconsistencies, showing our approach’s usability as the repair trees sizes ranged from five to nine on average per model. Also, these repair trees were generated in 0.3 seconds on average, showing our approach’s scalability. Based on the results, we discuss the correctness and minimalism with regard to the cause of the inconsistency. Lastly, we evaluated the filtering mechanism, showing that it is possible to further reduce the number of repairs generated by focusing on ownership.