Marcel van Amstel, Mark G. J. van den Brand. Model Transformation Analysis: Staying Ahead of the Maintenance Nightmare. In Jordi Cabot, Eelco Visser, editors, Theory and Practice of Model Transformations, Fourth International Conference, ICMT 2011, Zurich, Switzerland, June 27-28, 2011. Proceedings. Volume 6707 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 108-122, Springer, 2011.
Model-driven engineering (MDE) is a software engineering discipline that is gaining popularity, both in academia and industry. One of the integral concepts of MDE is model transformation. The prominent role of model transformations in MDE requires them to be treated in a similar way as traditional software artifacts. Numerous analysis techniques supporting the maintenance process exist for traditional software artifacts. However, few techniques tailored towards analyzing model transformations currently exist. We present in this paper three complementary techniques for the analysis of model transformations. These techniques are mainly focused on increasing the understanding of model transformations. Two of the proposed techniques have already been employed for the analysis of different kinds of software artifacts, viz. metrics, and structure and trace analysis. The third analysis technique, i.e., metamodel coverage analysis is specific for model transformations and does therefore not exist for different kinds of software artifacts.