Transformation Techniques in Software Engineering

Summary

The idea for this seminar began with the observation of a discrepancy:

While software transformation is a crosscutting theme in software engineering, the various fields in which it is used are only passingly aware of each other.

It would therefore make sense to bring together leading representatives from the different fields so that they can share problems and solutions related to their use of transformations and begin a dialogue on understanding transformation itself as a whole. Without claiming completeness, the following (somewhat overlapping) communities can be identified:

1. Program calculation
2. Language implementation
3. Model-driven development
4. Grammar(ware) engineering
5. Modelling and meta-modelling
6. Generative software development
7. Code restructuring and refactoring
8. Database reverse and re-engineering
9. Co-evolving designs and implementations
10. Data integration incl. semi-structured data
11. Design recovery and architectural recovery
12. Intentional and aspect-oriented programming

Most of these communities know of more than one kind of transformations. Also, transformation techniques are not always tied to a specific community. So it makes sense to abstract a little from the communities, and to identify some of the dimensions of variation for transformation techniques.

• The kind of grammars or schemas involved.
• The degree of automation of transformations.
• The degree of interactive transformations.
• The degree of formalisation of transformations.
• The degree of programming language support.
• The computational framework for transformations.
• The nature of transformation properties.
• The kinds of artifact: programs, data, and schemas.
• and so on.

During a week of intensive discussion, 47 participants from 12 countries attended the seminar, contributed presentations and participated in and/or organised discussion groups and panels. (International statistics for participants: Germany (14), Canada (12), U.S.A. (5), Belgium (4), the Netherlands (3), France (2), United Kingdom (2), Hungary (1), Ireland (1), Italy (1), Japan (1) and Switzerland (1).)