From out-place transformation evolution to in-place model patching

Abstract

Model transformation is a key technique to automate software engineering tasks. Like any other software, transformations are not resilient to change. As changes to transformations can invalidate previously produced models, these changes need to be reflected on existing models. Currently, revised out-place transformations are re-executed entirely to achieve this co-evolution task. However, this induces an unnecessary overhead, particularly when computation-intensive transformations are marginally revised, and if existing models have undergone updates prior the re-execution, these updates get discarded in the newly produced models.