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Vol: 55(69) No: 3 / September 2010

Formal Analysis of Incremental Code Generation in OCL Compilers
Tamás Vajk
Department of Automation and Applied Informatics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, Goldmann György tér 3. IV. em., 1111 Budapest, Hungary, phone: (361) 463-2870, e-mail: tamas.vajk@aut.bme.hu, web: http://www.aut.bme.hu/Portal/tamas.vajk/
Márk Asztalos
Department of Automation and Applied Informatics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, Goldmann György tér 3. IV. em., 1111 Budapest, Hungary, e-mail: asztalos@aut.bme.hu
Gergely Mezei
Department of Automation and Applied Informatics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, Goldmann György tér 3. IV. em., 1111 Budapest, Hungary, e-mail: gmezei@aut.bme.hu


Keywords: Object Constraint Language, compiler, code generation, incremental

Abstract
Software modeling with the Unified Modeling Language and the Object Constraint Language is becoming the standard way of designing large scale applications. Model developers can choose between more and more CASE tools based on feature list, flexibility and performance. Due to the iterative, incremental model development approach, in which the model developer defines static structure and later the corresponding restrictions one-by-one, the constant need for recompiling the constraints necessitates translator optimizations, such as incremental compilation. In this paper, we present the most wide-spread OCL compilers with their code generation approaches and our environment, the Visual Modeling and Transformation System. We illustrate an algorithm to translate OCL code fragments to their C# equivalents incrementally. Also, we provide a feasible mapping between the languages, and a formal analysis of the mapping is given to verify the applicability of the algorithms.
The introduced algorithm is universal enough to be used in any compiler application that utilizes an underlying Abstract Syntax Tree representation of the input code if an expression-preserving mapping has been given between source and target languages. The main achievement of the proposed method is that the duration of model development can be decreased, thus, the efficiency of the environment is improved.

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