GRoundTram: An integrated framework for developing well-behaved bidirectional model transformations

Bidirectional model transformation is useful for maintaining consistency between two models, and has many potential applications in software development including model synchronization, round-trip engineering, and software evolution. Despite these attractive uses, the lack of a practical tool supporting for systematic development prevents it from being widely used. In this paper, we solve this problem by proposing an integrated framework called GRoundTram (Graph Roundtrip Transformation for Models), which is carefully designed and implemented for compositional development of well-behaved and efficient bidirectional model transformations. GRoundTram is built upon a well-founded bidirectional framework and is equipped with a user-friendly language for coding bidirectional model transformations, a novel tool for validating both models and transformations, an optimization mechanism for improving efficiency, and a powerful debugging environment for testing bidirectional behavior. GRoundTram has been used by other reseach groups besides ourselves and their results show its usefulness in practice.