Transformation From CIM to PIM: a Systematic Mapping

Model Driven Architecture (MDA) is the most prominent and accepted methodology based on the Model Driven Development (MDD) principles. MDA includes three abstraction levels: Computer Independent Models (CIM), Platform Independent models (PIM) and Platform specific models (PSM). MDA encourages the automatic transformation of models as a means to increase the speed of the software development process and to prevent human errors. There are plenty of solutions to transform PIMs to PSMs, however the CIM to PIM transformation does not receive a similar attention. In that sense, this paper aims to describe a systematic mapping to analyze the main characteristics of the approaches that deal with the CIM to PIM transformation as well as to discuss research directions stemming out from our analysis. The results of this mapping study could be a valuable information source for the scientific community in order to know the real advances in this topic and to avoid unnecessary effort dealing with problems that have already been addressed. For example, this study yielded the models at the CIM level that have already been transformed into models at the PIM level. Hence, with this information, the researchers could focus their attention on finding solutions to transform those models at CIM level that have not been transformed into models at PIM level. Likewise, this mapping study provides information regarding the technological support of this type of transformation. This information could be useful for those software projects interested to adopt MDA.