Metamodel-Specific Coupled Evolution Based on Dynamically Typed Graph Transformations

• Published in: Theory and Practice of Model Transformations pp. 76 - 91
• Main Authors: Krause, Christian, Dyck, Johannes, Giese, Holger
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin, Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2013
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Couple Evolution; Eclipse Modeling Framework; Graph Transformation; Instance Model; Model Migration
• ISBN: 9783642388828; 3642388825
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-38883-5_10

A key challenge in model-driven software engineering is the evolution of metamodels and the required effort in migrating their instance models. Even though there already exist both theoretical work and tool support for coupled evolution of metamodels and models, the existing approaches lack expressive power for defining metamodel-specific coupled changes or are too generic to permit assurance of metamodel conformance. In this paper, we devise a mechanism to define and execute coupled evolutions of metamodels and instance models based on graph transformations. We target the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) and achieve the coupling of changes by bridging the conceptual gap between the metamodel and the instance model levels using a wrapper for EMF instance models. Coupled evolutions are then defined by means of dynamically typed graph transformation rules. This specification approach is expressive as it allows the developer to model customized migration rules, which are pivotal for metamodel-specific changes. We present static and run-time consistency checks and show how to decouple the execution of migrations. Our implementation consists of a wrapper package that is used in conjunction with the model transformation tool Henshin.