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Towards the Systematic Construction of Domain-Specific Transformation Languages

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Book cover Modelling Foundations and Applications (ECMFA 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 8569))

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Abstract

General-purpose transformation languages, like ATL or QVT, are the basis for model manipulation in Model-Driven Engineering (MDE). However, as MDE moves to more complex scenarios, there is the need for specialized transformation languages for activities like model merging, migration or aspect weaving, or for specific domains of wide use like UML. Such domain-specific transformation languages (DSTLs) encapsulate transformation knowledge within a language, enabling the reuse of recurrent solutions to transformation problems.

Nowadays, many DSTLs are built in an ad-hoc manner, which requires a high development cost to achieve a full-featured implementation. Alternatively, they are realised by an embedding into general-purpose transformation or programming languages like ATL or Java.

In this paper, we propose a framework for the systematic creation of DSTLs. First, we look into the characteristics of domain-specific transformation tools, deriving a categorization which is the basis of our framework. Then, we propose a domain-specific language to describe DSTLs, from which we derive a ready-to-run workbench which includes the abstract syntax, concrete syntax and translational semantics of the DSTL.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain

    Jesús Sánchez Cuadrado, Esther Guerra & Juan de Lara

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  1. Jesús Sánchez Cuadrado
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  2. Esther Guerra
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  3. Juan de Lara
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Department, AtlanMod team (Inria, Mines Nantes, LINA), École des Mines de Nantes, 4, rue Alfred Kastler, 44307, Nantes Cedex 3, France

    Jordi Cabot

  2. IBM Research, Haifa University Campus, Mount Carmel, 31905, Haifa, Israel

    Julia Rubin

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Sánchez Cuadrado, J., Guerra, E., de Lara, J. (2014). Towards the Systematic Construction of Domain-Specific Transformation Languages. In: Cabot, J., Rubin, J. (eds) Modelling Foundations and Applications. ECMFA 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8569. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09195-2_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09195-2_13

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-09194-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-09195-2

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