Section: New Results

Model Transformation

Model transformation and in particular our ATL model transformation language continues playing a key role in our MDE strategy. During 2011 the new results in this area have been:

• The development of an execution algorithm for the lazy execution of ATL transformations [31] . The increasing adoption of Model-Driven Engineering in industrial contexts highlights scalability as a critical limitation of several MDE tools. When these tools are built around model-to-model (M2M) transformations, the efficiency of the transformation engine risks to become a performance bottleneck for the whole MDE environment. This new execution mode solves this problem by providing on-demand execution of model transformations. The computation required to generate a data element of the target model is only triggered once the user requests to read that data element.

• Towards a general semantics for transformation languages. In the mid-term, we would like to be able to achieve interoperability among existing transformation languages (e.g. to create mixed transformations or simply to compare alternative transformation solutions for the same escenario). In this direction, we have worked on a general composition semantics for rule-based transformation languages [32] and an extensive survey of inheritance support in existing languages [33] . Moreover, to make ATL closer to other transformation languages, in special graph transformations, we have developed a new ATL refining mode [43] that allows executing in-place transformations

• Also relevant, this year AtlanMod has coorganized the main international conference on model transformations [41]