Editing Round-trip engineering (section)

{{refimprove|date=December 2009}}
'''Round-trip engineering''' ('''RTE''') in the context of [[model-driven architecture]] is a functionality of [[software development tools]] that synchronizes two or more related software artifacts, such as, source code, [[Conceptual model (computer science)|models]], configuration files, documentation, etc. between each other.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Gentle|first1=Anne|title=Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation|date=2012|publisher=XML Press|isbn=978-1937434106|edition=2nd}}</ref> The need for round-trip engineering arises when the same information is present in multiple artifacts and when an inconsistency may arise in case some artifacts are updated. For example, some piece of information was added to/changed in only one artifact (source code) and, as a result, it became missing in/inconsistent with the other artifacts (in models).