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This paper describes a new modelling language for the effective design and validation of Java annotations. Since their inclusion in the 5th edition of Java, annotations have grown from a useful tool for the addition of meta-data to play a central role in many popular software projects. Usually they are not conceived in isolation, but in groups, with dependency and integrity constraints between them. However, the native support provided by Java for expressing this design is very limited. To overcome its deficiencies and make explicit the rich conceptual model which lies behind a set of annotations, we propose a domain-specific modelling language. The proposal has been implemented as an Eclipse plug-in, including an editor and an integrated code generator that synthesises annotation processors. The environment also integrates a model finder, able to detect unsatisfiable constraints between different annotations, and to provide examples of correct annotation usages for validation. The language has been tested using a real set of annotations from the Java Persistence API (JPA). Within this subset we have found enough rich semantics expressible with Ann and omitted nowadays by the Java language, which shows the benefits of Ann in a relevant field of application., Comment: 45 pages, 14 figures, 2016 journal publication. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1807.03566 more...

This paper describes a new modelling language for the effective design of Java annotations. Since their inclusion in the 5th edition of Java, annotations have grown from a useful tool for the addition of meta-data to play a central role in many popular software projects. Usually they are conceived as sets with dependency and integrity constraints within them; however, the native support provided by Java for expressing this design is very limited. To overcome its deficiencies and make explicit the rich conceptual model which lies behind a set of annotations, we propose a domain-specific modelling language. The proposal has been implemented as an Eclipse plug-in, including an editor and an integrated code generator that synthesises annotation processors. The language has been tested using a real set of annotations from the Java Persistence API (JPA). It has proven to cover a greater scope with respect to other related work in different shared areas of application., Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, 2015 conference more...

This document reports on the use of an algebraic, visual, formal approach to the specification of patterns for the formalization of the GoF design patterns. The approach is based on graphs, morphisms and operations from category theory and exploits triple graphs to annotate model elements with pattern roles. Being based on category theory, the approach can be applied to formalize patterns in different domains. Novel in our proposal is the possibility of describing (nested) variable submodels, inter-pattern synchronization across several diagrams (e.g. class and sequence diagrams for UML design patterns), pattern composition, and conflict analysis., Comment: 17 pages and 41 figures. Supplementary material for the paper to appear in the Information and Software Technology Journal. more...

Graph transformation is concerned with the manipulation of graphs by means of rules. Graph grammars have been traditionally studied using techniques from category theory. In previous works, we introduced Matrix Graph Grammars (MGGs) as a purely algebraic approach for the study of graph grammars and graph dynamics, based on the representation of graphs by means of their adjacency matrices. MGGs have been succesfully applied to problems such as applicability of rule sequences, sequentialization and reachability, providing new analysis techniques and generalizing and improving previous results. Our next objective is to generalize MGGs in order to approach computational complexity theory and "static" properties of graphs out of the "dynamics" of certain grammars. In the present work, we start building bridges between MGGs and complexity by introducing what we call "Monotone Complex Logic", which allows establishing a (bijective) link between MGGs and complex analysis. We use this logic to recast the formulation and basic building blocks of MGGs as more proper geometric and analytic concepts (scalar products, norms, distances). MGG rules can also be interpreted - via operators - as complex numbers. Interestingly, the subset they define can be characterized as the Sierpinski gasket., Comment: 30 pages, 12 figures more...

We present a new, high-level approach for the specification of model-to-model transformations based on declarative patterns. These are (atomic or composite) constraints on triple graphs declaring the allowed or forbidden relationships between source and target models. In this way, a transformation is defined by specifying a set of triple graph constraints that should be satisfied by the result of the transformation. The description of the transformation is then compiled into lower-level operational mechanisms to perform forward or backward transformations, as well as to establish mappings between two existent models. In this paper we study one of such mechanisms based on the generation of operational triple graph grammar rules. Moreover, we exploit deduction techniques at the specification level to generate more specialized constraints (preserving the specification semantics) reflecting pattern dependencies, from which additional rules can be derived. This is an extended version of the paper submitted to ICGT'08, with additional definitions and proofs., Comment: extended version of the paper from the ICGT'2008 conference (Leicester) more...