Transformation of the CIM Model into A PIM Model According to The MDA Approach for Application Interoperability: Case of the "COVID-19 Patient Management" Business Process

Abstract

Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) plays a very important role in improving the development of complex systems. It focuses more on modeling than on classical programming. In this sense, model transformation is at the heart of the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) approach which advocates the use of models throughout the software development cycle on two levels. The first being the transformation of the Computing Independent Model (CIM) into the Platform Independent Model (PIM) and the second concerning the transformation of PIM into Platform Specific Model (PSM).

The latter has been dealt with in the majority of research works while the transformation from CIM to PIM which represents the highest level is rarely discussed in research topics. It is for this reason and in the spirit of improving the process of transforming the CIM model into PIM according to the MDA approach, that we have developed this research work in order to propose a new method and new transformation rules for optimization of the business process "COVID-19 patient management". Our contribution consists of the semi-automatic transformation of the CIM model presented by the BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) source model into a PIM target model presented by a class diagram by using a set of transformation and correspondence rules that we performed manually using the language ATL (Atlas Transformation Language). This automatic transformation of the two source and target models is provided by the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) which executes the transformation rules described manually in ATL and generates the PIM target model as an XMI (XML Metadata Interchange) file representing the target class diagram.