Model transformation for design pattern discovery and semantic Web service description

Model Driven Engineering (MDE) is a software engineering methodology where models, such as architecture specifications and design models, are given more attention. Model transformation processes a model conforming to a given meta-model and generates another model conforming to the same or a different meta-model according to pre-defined transformation rules. In this dissertation, the model transformation approach is applied in solving two problems, the design pattern discovery and the semantic Web service description.;Design patterns have been widely applied in many software systems in industry. However, the information of the pattern applications, as known as pattern instances, in software systems is typically not available. Recovering design pattern instances from software systems helps to understand the original design decisions and tradeoffs, and makes it easier to change software systems. This dissertation presents the model transformation approach for pattern discovery. In detail, the approach transforms the design models of software systems and design patterns into matrices and weights. The approach identifies potential pattern instances that structurally conform to pattern definitions by comparing the matrices and weights of software systems and patterns. In addition, the approach checks the behavioral and semantic properties of the candidates and filters out the false instances. The approach is formally defined and practically implemented by a tool, DP-Miner. A set of experiments with real-world systems are carried out to evaluate the approach.;A semantic Web service is an application available through the Internet. It is associated with ontologies that describe the semantic concepts related to the service. The Web Service Modeling Ontology (WSMO) is an ontology to describe various aspects of semantic Web services. The Web Service Modeling Language (WSML) is a description language for WSMO. Since WSML is an Extensible Markup Language (XML) based language, it is not suitable to model Web service. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) has been widely used as a modeling language. This dissertation presents a model transformation approach to allow modeling semantic Web services in UML. The approach involves extending UML, establishing mapping between UML and WSML language constructs, establishing mapping between OCL and WSML language constructs, implementing transformation according to the mapping. This dissertation presents a case study and experiments as evaluations of the approach.