Kodegen: A code generation and testing tool using runnable knowledge

Abstract

KDE – Knowledge Driven Engineering – is a generalization of MDE – Model Driven Engineering – to a higher level of abstraction than the standard UML software models, aiming to be closer to the system designer concepts. But in order to reach an effective technology applicable in industry, one needs to implement it in a tool using Runnable Knowledge, i.e. which can be run and tested. This work describes KODEGEN – a KDE tool for testing while generating code – whose input consists of system ontologies, ontology states and scenario files. Incidental concepts not part of the ontologies are replaced by mock objects. The implementation uses a modified Gherkin syntax. The tool is demonstrated in practice by generating the actual code for a few case-studies.