Translating alloy apecifications to UML class diagrams annotated with OCL

Abstract

Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is a Software Engineering approach based on model transformations at different abstraction levels. It prescribes the development of software by successively transforming models from abstract (specifications) to more concrete ones (code). Alloy is an increasingly popular lightweight formal specification language that supports automatic verification. Unfortunately, its widespread industrial adoption is hampered by the lack of an ecosystem of MDE tools, namely code generators. This paper presents a model transformation between Alloy and UML Class Diagrams annotated with OCL. The proposed transformation enables current UML-based tools to also be applied to Alloy specifications, thus unleashing its potential for MDE.