The design of a language for model transformations

Abstract

Model-driven development of software systems envisions transformations applied in various stages of the development process. Similarly, the use of domain-specific languages also necessitates transformations that map domain-specific constructs into the constructs of an underlying programming language. Thus, in these cases, the writing of transformation tools becomes a first-class activity of the software engineer. This paper introduces a language that was designed to support implementing highly efficient transformation programs that perform model-to-model or model-to-code translations. The language uses the concepts of graph transformations and metamodeling, and is supported by a suite of tools that allow the rapid prototyping and realization of transformation tools.