BIT: A template-based approach to incremental and bidirectional model-to-text transformation

Abstract

Model-driven development is a model-centric software development paradigm that automates the development process by converting high-level models into low-level code and documents. To maintain synchronization between models and code/documents — which can evolve independently — this paper introduces BIT, a bidirectional language that can serve as a conventional template language for model-to-text transformations. However, a BIT program can function as both a printer, generating text by filling template holes with values from the input model, and a parser, putting parsed values back into the model. BIT comprises a surface language for better usability and a core language for formal definition. We define the semantics of the core language based on the theory of bidirectional transformation, and provide the translation from the surface to the core. We present the proof sketch of the well behavedness of BIT as a formal evidence of soundness. We also conduct three case studies to empirically demonstrate the expressiveness and the effectiveness of BIT. Based on the proof and the case studies, BIT covers the major features of existing template languages, and offers sufficient expressiveness to define real-world model-to-text transformations that can be executed bidirectionally and incrementally.