Software Model Evolution with Large Language Models: Experiments on Simulated, Public, and Industrial Datasets

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Main Authors: Tinnes, Christof, Welter, Alisa, Apel, Sven
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Tinnes, Christof
Welter, Alisa
Apel, Sven
author_facet Tinnes, Christof
Welter, Alisa
Apel, Sven
contents Modeling structure and behavior of software systems plays a crucial role in the industrial practice of software engineering. As with other software engineering artifacts, software models are subject to evolution. Supporting modelers in evolving software models with recommendations for model completions is still an open problem, though. In this paper, we explore the potential of large language models for this task. In particular, we propose an approach, RAMC, leveraging large language models, model histories, and retrieval-augmented generation for model completion. Through experiments on three datasets, including an industrial application, one public open-source community dataset, and one controlled collection of simulated model repositories, we evaluate the potential of large language models for model completion with RAMC. We found that large language models are indeed a promising technology for supporting software model evolution (62.30% semantically correct completions on real-world industrial data and up to 86.19% type-correct completions). The general inference capabilities of large language models are particularly useful when dealing with concepts for which there are few, noisy, or no examples at all.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_17651
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Software Model Evolution with Large Language Models: Experiments on Simulated, Public, and Industrial Datasets
Tinnes, Christof
Welter, Alisa
Apel, Sven
Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
94-04
D.2.2
Modeling structure and behavior of software systems plays a crucial role in the industrial practice of software engineering. As with other software engineering artifacts, software models are subject to evolution. Supporting modelers in evolving software models with recommendations for model completions is still an open problem, though. In this paper, we explore the potential of large language models for this task. In particular, we propose an approach, RAMC, leveraging large language models, model histories, and retrieval-augmented generation for model completion. Through experiments on three datasets, including an industrial application, one public open-source community dataset, and one controlled collection of simulated model repositories, we evaluate the potential of large language models for model completion with RAMC. We found that large language models are indeed a promising technology for supporting software model evolution (62.30% semantically correct completions on real-world industrial data and up to 86.19% type-correct completions). The general inference capabilities of large language models are particularly useful when dealing with concepts for which there are few, noisy, or no examples at all.
title Software Model Evolution with Large Language Models: Experiments on Simulated, Public, and Industrial Datasets
topic Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
94-04
D.2.2
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.17651