Samir Benahmed’s research while affiliated with Tunis El Manar University and other places

Design patterns recognition and injection constitute challenging tasks in software engineering, since they are generally conducted in a non-formal way. In this paper, we will present an approach for decomposing and formalizing design patterns using graph transformation systems. We will propose a combined graph-based description for design patterns structure, interactions and constraints. Then, based on this description, we will introduce a set of Elementary Transformations whose diverse combinations lead to the design patterns injection. These elementary transformations are formal, precise and presented in a generic form that allows to describe the 23 design patterns defined by the GOF. Detailed descriptions and examples are presented in this paper in order to illustrate our approach.

The definition of the semantics of visual languages, in particular Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams, using graph formalism has known a wide success, since graphs fit the multi-dimensional nature of this kind of language. However, constraints written in Object Constraint Language (OCL) and defined on these models are still not well integrated within this graph-based semantics. In this chapter, the authors propose an integrated semantics of OCL constraints within class diagrams, using graph transformation systems. Their contribution is divided into two parts. In the first part, they introduce graph constraint patterns, as the translation into graphs of a subset of OCL expressions. These patterns are validated with experimental examples using the GROOVE toolset. In the second part, the authors define the relation between OCL and UML models within their graph transformation system.