Customizing model migrations by rule schemes

Abstract

Model-driven engineering (MDE) is a software engineering discipline focusing on models as the primary artifacts in the software development process while programs are mainly generated by means of model-to-code transformations. In particular, modeling languages tailored to specific application domains promise to increase the productivity and quality of software development. Nevertheless due to e.g. evolving requirements, modeling languages and their meta-models evolve which means that existing models have to be migrated correspondingly. In our approach, such co-evolutions are specified as related graph transformations ensuring well-typed model migration results. Based on our earlier work on co-transformations, we now consider the automatic deduction of migration rule schemes from given meta-model evolution rules. Rule schemes form the basis for user customizations on a high abstraction level. A rule scheme deduction algorithm is presented and several customized migration schemes for different co-evolution examples are discussed.