Surviving the Heterogeneity Jungle with Composite Mapping Operators

Model transformations play a key role in the vision of Model-Driven Engineering. Nevertheless, mechanisms like abstraction, variation and composition for specifying and applying reusable model transformations - like urgently needed for resolving recurring structural heterogeneities - are insufficiently supported so far. Therefore, we propose to specify model transformations by a set of pre-defined mapping operators (MOps), each resolving a certain kind of structural heterogeneity. Firstly, these MOps can be used in the context of arbitrary metamodels since they abstract from concrete metamodel types. Secondly, MOps can be tailored to resolve certain structural heterogeneities by means of black-box reuse. Thirdly, based on a systematic set of kernel MOps resolving basic heterogeneities, composite ones can be built in order to deal with more complex scenarios. Finally, an extensible library of MOps is proposed, allowing for automatically executable mapping specifications since every MOp exhibits a clearly defined operational semantics.

[1]  Jean-Michel Bruel,et al.  Satellite Events at the MoDELS 2005 Conference , 2006 .

[2]  Jean Bézivin,et al.  On the Use of Higher-Order Model Transformations , 2009, ECMDA-FA.

[3]  Wang Chiew Tan,et al.  STBenchmark: towards a benchmark for mapping systems , 2008, Proc. VLDB Endow..

[4]  Erhard Rahm,et al.  A survey of approaches to automatic schema matching , 2001, The VLDB Journal.

[5]  Jean Bézivin,et al.  AMW: a generic model weaver , 2005 .

[6]  Alexander Königs,et al.  Model transformation with triple graph grammars , 2005 .

[7]  Jean Bézivin,et al.  On the unification power of models , 2005, Software & Systems Modeling.

[8]  Olivier Barais,et al.  Matching model-snippets , 2007, MODELS'07.

[9]  Dániel Varró,et al.  Generic and Meta-transformations for Model Transformation Engineering , 2004, UML.

[10]  Jeff Kramer,et al.  Is abstraction the key to computing? , 2007, CACM.

[11]  Roger King,et al.  Semantic database modeling: survey, applications, and research issues , 1987, CSUR.

[12]  Ian Horrocks,et al.  Ontologies and the semantic web , 2008, CACM.

[13]  Krzysztof Czarnecki,et al.  Feature-based survey of model transformation approaches , 2006, IBM Syst. J..

[14]  Paolo Papotti,et al.  Clip: a Visual Language for Explicit Schema Mappings , 2008, 2008 IEEE 24th International Conference on Data Engineering.

[15]  Boris Motik,et al.  MAFRA - A MApping FRAmework for Distributed Ontologies , 2002, EKAW.

[16]  Patrick Valduriez,et al.  Towards the efficient development of model transformations using model weaving and matching transformations , 2009, Software & Systems Modeling.

[17]  Gerti Kappel,et al.  Lost in Translation? Transformation Nets to the Rescue! , 2009, UNISCON.

[18]  Vipul Kashyap,et al.  Semantic and schematic similarities between database objects: a context-based approach , 1996, The VLDB Journal.

[19]  Arend Rensink.  Model Driven Architecture - Foundations and Applications, 5th European Conference, ECMDA-FA 2009, Enschede, The Netherlands, June 23-26, 2009. Proceedings , 2009, ECMDA-FA.

[20]  Gerti Kappel,et al.  A Framework for Building Mapping Operators Resolving Structural Heterogeneities , 2008, UNISCON.

[21]  Jean Bézivin,et al.  ATL: A model transformation tool , 2008, Sci. Comput. Program..

[22]  Felix Naumann,et al.  A Classification of Schema Mappings and Analysis of Mapping Tools , 2007, BTW.

[23]  Kevin Lano,et al.  Slicing of UML models using model transformations , 2010, MODELS'10.