New Model-Driven Engineering Course: Petri Nets, Metamodels, and Graph Grammars

1. a model-driven course on Petri-Nets, Metamodels and Graph Grammars Students can get excited about Formal Methods Serge Demeyer serge.demeyer@ua.ac.be Pieter Van Gorp pieter.vangorp@ua.ac.be Dirk Janssens dirk.janssens@ua.ac.be Hans Schippers hans.schippers@ua.ac.be

2. Problem • Myth of Formal Methods: • exhaustive proofs • high training required • hard to comprehend • expensive • ...

3. Solution Prevent spread of such myths into Industry Variety of Courses apply Formal Modeling designing a distributed system: introduction to UML, designing a compiler: advanced class diagrams, text grammars, relational algebra, B, Z, OCL, Hoare Logic, ... However: always limited to one modeling language / formalism no link between: “mathematical” languages more human-friendly languages source code students: formal methods not applicable in practical software engineering? Therefore: New Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) Course Software Development with Various Formalisms Metamodeling and Model Transformation

4. Presentation Overview • Designing the Course • Objectives • Tool Selection • Course Description • Teaching Methods • Evaluation Methods • Course Artifacts • Link to Objectives • Lessons Learned

5. Objectives / Expected Learning Outcomes “Based on formal specifications (logical specifications, statecharts, Petri-Nets) the student should be able to build models expressing the intended functionality of a system, to analyse and to verify these models, and togenerate a working implementation from them.” “The student should be able to express the intendedfunctionality of a system from different viewpoints indifferent formalisms (Petri-Nets, Graph Grammars) and ensure particular properties (boundedness, consistency, ...) of such models. The student should use state-of-the-art transformation techniques(model animation, model translation and code generation) tointegrate distinctmodels and relatethem to a completeimplementation. The student should experiment withmetamodelling in this context, and acquire an understandingof the benefits and limitations of the 4-layer meta-data architecture.” (Meta-) Modeling Properties Transformations Designing the Course >> khj

6. DiaMeta advantage: standard (MOF) compliant interoperable with group's research tool disadvantage: immature Tiger advantage: “sexy” (Eclipse) disadvantage: heavyweight, yet no MOF/EMF support (yet) AToM3 advantages: self-containedness disadvantage: non-standard Designing the Course >> Tool Selection

7. Presentation Overview • Designing the Course • Objectives • Tool Selection • Course Description • Teaching Methods • Evaluation Methods • Course Artifacts • Link to Objectives • Lessons Learned

8. Course Description >> Teaching Methods 7x 11x

9. BlackBoard Assignments: 8 Relaxed Deadlines E-mail sumissions Incremental Assignments Prepared Solutions Assignment completion overview Three Evaluation Milestones Extra Examination: Oral with written preparation Course Description >> Evaluation

10. Presentation Overview • Designing the Course • Objectives • Tool Selection • Course Description • Teaching Methods • Evaluation Methods • Course Artifacts • Link to Objectives • Lessons Learned

11. Petri-Net Editor (I/II) Ph. 5: Forks on Table All thinking Ph. 1: Forks on Table ... ... Ph. 3: Forks on Table Ph. 3: Could eat too Ph. 2: Forks on Table Ph. 4: Forks on Table Ph. 4: Cannot start eating! Ph. 6: Forks on Table Ph. 1 & 5 will start eating Course Artifacts >>

12. Course Artifacts >> Petri-Net Editor (II/II) • Modeling a Visual Language Editor • Modeling Language Structure (= metamodel) • >> as E/R or Class Diagram • Modeling Concrete Syntax • Some Python code required

13. Animation changes train location Course Artifacts >> RailRoad Editor ... ... ...

14. Graph Grammars (I/II)

15. Train 2 Petri Translation: Out-Place MtoN rules Train 2 Petri Transl.: Traceability Graph Grammars (II/II) Train Animation: rewriting of abstract nodes

16. Presentation Overview • Designing the Course • Objectives • Tool Selection • Course Description • Teaching Methods • Evaluation Methods • Course Artifacts • Link to Objectives • Lessons Learned

17. Properties Transformation Modeling Discussion: Evaluation AToM3 GGs Classification Papers “Beyond AToM3” Course Description >> Content<>Objectives Introduction Papers, Discussion, Motivating Demo’s C/E Nets Safety Generating Editors P/T Nets Deadlocks? PN Animation Colored Nets Next step: tracing back analysis results Train Animation PN Metamodel Train Metamodel Train-to-PN PN Models Train Models dq

18. Presentation Overview • Designing the Course • Objectives • Tool Selection • Course Description • Teaching Methods • Course Artifacts • Evaluation Methods • Link to Objectives • Lessons Learned

19. Best Practices Best Practices Feasibility Study Expert Supervision Start Small Work Incrementally Illustrate Applicability Examples First Problems First Lessons Learned >>

20. Lessons Learned >> Planned Improvements • Planned Improvements • Provide Tool Feedback • Consider Alternative Tools • Provide Integration Components • to Petri-Net Analysis Tools • Extend Railroad Case Study • Prepare Follow-Up Courses

21. Lessons Learned >> Industrial Relevance • Industrial Relevance • Curriculum at University of Antwerp: • 3 Master Profiles: • industrial, • educational, • or research profile. • Course in BACH3 tradeoff! • Concrete alternatives: • Use of UML code generator (transformations) in popular middleware context • Building editors and transformations without middleware focus • Why (b)? • tool internals look beyond marketing! • demand from automotive industry

22. Conclusions • Course Format • Conventional Lectures: Petri-Nets • Paper Discussions: MDE • AToM3 Lab SessionsIntegrated Case Study, Problems First • Course Focus • Integration of Languages • Course Evaluation • Content meets Objectives • BlackBoard Questionnaire: Students Excited! • Encouraging basis for other new MDE courses

23. Thanks for your Attention Questions? pieter.vangorp@ua.ac.be http://www.fots.ua.ac.be/~pvgorp/research/ http://www.pietervangorp.com/