VICToRy: Visual Interactive Consistency Management in Tolerant Rule-based Systems

TL;DR

VICToRy is an interactive debugger for model transformations in Model-Driven Engineering that enhances user control and understanding through visualisation and active exploration of rule applications.

Contribution

It introduces a visual, interactive debugging tool for Triple Graph Grammar-based transformations, improving transparency and user control in consistency management.

Findings

Enhanced user control over rule application choices

Improved understandability of model transformations

Supports step-by-step visualisation of transformation processes

Abstract

In the field of Model-Driven Engineering, there exist numerous tools that support various consistency management operations including model transformation, synchronisation and consistency checking. The supported operations, however, typically run completely in the background with only input and output made visible to the user. We argue that this often reduces both understandability and controllability. As a step towards improving this situation, we present VICToRy, a debugger for model generation and transformation based on Triple Graph Grammars, a well-known rule-based approach to bidirectional transformation. In addition to a fine-grained, step-by-step, interactive visualisation, VICToRy enables the user to actively explore and choose between multiple valid rule applications thus improving control and understanding.