Clafer Tools 0.3.5 Released

by Michał Antkiewicz
 
Clafer Tools 0.3.5.20-01-2014 is a simultaneous release of the Clafer

1. compiler
2. wiki
3. Alloy-based instance generator
4. Choco3-based solver
5. Choco3-based instance generator
6. IDE
7. configurator
8. Mooloy-based exact multi-objective optimizer
9. Choco3-based exact single-objective optimizer
10. MOO visualizer and explorer
11. Clafer Tools UI Common Platform

projects.

Models expressed in Clafer can be translated either to Alloy and used for instance generation and multi-objective optimization or to Choco3 and used for instance generation and single-objective optimization.

The binary distributions of all tools are available for download.
The following are links to public live demo installations of

• ClaferWiki
• ClaferIDE
• ClaferMooVisualizer
• ClaferConfigurator

The 0.3.5 release is mostly focused on adding the Choco3-based backends and the three web-based tools: the new tool-ClaferIDE, and improvements of the ClaferMooVisualizer and ClaferConfigurator. In this release, the three web projects, which were forks of each other, were refactored into a product-line based on an integrated platform, the Clafer Tools UI Common Platform.
We have also created two new wiki resources:

• Guidelines for Feature Modeling using Clafer
• An interactive assignment designed to introduce the concepts of variability management, multi-objective optimization, and computational decision-making in product line engineering.

Example-Driven Modeling Using Clafer paper & presentation

by Michał Antkiewicz
 
UPDATE (Jan 16, 2014): Our paper "Effects of Using Examples on Structural Model Comprehension" has been accepted for publication at ICSE'14.

In the paper, we present a controlled experiment for the empirical evaluation of Example-Driven Modeling (EDM) for model comprehension and domain knowledge transfer. The results show a significant positive impact of using examples on the performance of experiment participants.

On Sep. 29, at the Model-Driven Engineering by Example workshop at the MODELS'13 conference we presented a paper Example-Driven Modeling Using Clafer. The paper shows a scenario in which Alice, an SME, and Bob, a BA, are communicating using examples, inferring abstractions, deriving new examples, and validating the abstractions.

The paper showcases the importance of redefinition, partial typing, and partial instantiation for the presented vision of performing example-driven modeling. The slides of the presentation are available at the publication's page.

Support for redefinition is partially implemented in Clafer 0.4.0. A preview release is available from binary distributions.