Constraint specification by example in a Meta-CASE tool

Qattous, H.K. (2009) Constraint specification by example in a Meta-CASE tool. In: Proceedings of the ESEC/FSE'09 Joint 12th European Software Engineering Conference (ESEC) and 17th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE-17). UNSPECIFIED, pp. 13-16. (doi: 10.1145/1595782.1595787)

Abstract

CASE tools are very helpful to software engineers in different ways and in different phases of software development. However, they are not easy to specialise to meet the needs of particular application domains or particular software modelling requirements. Meta-CASE tools offer a way of providing such specialisation by enabling a designer to specify a tool which is then generated automatically. Constraints are often used in such meta-CASE tools as a technique for governing the syntax and semantics of model elements and the values of their attributes. However, although constraint definition is a difficult process it has attracted relatively little research attention. The PhD research described here presents an approach for improving the process of CASE tool constraint specification based on the notion of programming by example (or demonstration). The feasibility of the approach will be demonstrated via experiments with a prototype using the meta-CASE tool Diagram Editor Constraints System (DECS) as context.

• Item Type: Book Sections
• Additional Information: Copyright © ACM, 2009. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Proceedings of the ESEC/FSE'09 Joint 12th European Software Engineering Conference (ESEC) and 17th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE-17), (2009) http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1595782.1595787
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Qattous, Mr Hazem
• Authors: Qattous, H.K.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © ACM, 2009
• First Published: First published in Proceedings ESEC/FSE'09 Joint 12th European Software Engineering Conference (ESEC) and 17th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE-17) : 13-16
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher.