Model-driven software development (MDSD) is an alternative to round-trip engineering. As explained by Thomas Stahler and Markus Voelter in their book, the difference relates to the level of abstraction of the model in each case, compared to the code:
Stahler and Voelter suggest four ways by which the same goal can be achieved in MDSD without requiring round-trip engineering:
References
Model-driven software development Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA