Solving the TTC 2011 Reengineering Case with MOLA and Higher-Order Transformations

TL;DR

This paper presents a solution for extracting state machines from Java code using MOLA, employing higher-order transformations to enhance reusability and ease of use for non-developer users.

Contribution

It introduces the use of higher-order transformations in MOLA to generate reusable transformation libraries for complex model extraction tasks.

Findings

Successfully extracted state machines from Java source code

Demonstrated the effectiveness of HOTs in creating reusable transformation components

Enhanced accessibility of model transformation techniques for non-developers

Abstract

The Reengineering Case of the Transformation Tool Contest 2011 deals with automatic extraction of state machine from Java source code. The transformation task involves complex, non-local matching of model elements. This paper contains the solution of the task using model transformation language MOLA. The MOLA solution uses higher-order transformations (HOT-s) to generate a part of the required MOLA program. The described HOT approach allows creating reusable, complex model transformation libraries for generic tasks without modifying an implementation of a model transformation language. Thus model transformation users who are not the developers of the language can achieve the desired functionality more easily.