On the Impact of Automation and Trace-Enabling over the Quality of Model Transformations

In the context of Model-Driven Engineering (MDE), the generation of traces can be automated using the implicit traceability relationships contained in any model transformation. Furthermore, if transformations were to be developed by adopting a model-based approach, they might benefit from the promised advantages of MDE in terms of a less costly software development while reducing the inherent complexity of coding them. Bearing these ideas in mind, in previous works we have introduced MeTAGeM-Trace, an EMF-based toolkit for the MDD of model transformations which supports trace generation. However, automation might have a negative impact on the quality of the products generated. To assess whether this is actually the case with MeTAGeM-Trace, this work presents the principal results of an experiment in which the quality of model transformations developed in different manners, including the use of MeTAGeM-Trace, are compared with the aim of evaluating the impact of automation and trace-enabling on the quality of model transformations.