A View-Oriented Approach to System Modelling Using Graph Transformations

The idea of a combined reference model- and view-based specification approach has been proposed recently in the software engineering community. In this paper we present a specification technique based on graph transformations which supports such a development approach. The use of graphs and graph transformations supports an intuitive understanding and an integration of static and dynamic aspects on a well-defined semantical base. On this background, formal notions of view and view relation are developed and the behaviour of views is described by a loose semantics. We define a construction for automatic view integration which assumes that the dependencies between different views are described by a reference model. The views and the reference model are kept consistent manually, which is the task of a model manager. All concepts and results are illustrated at the well-known example of a banking system.