Louis M. Rose, Richard F. Paige, Dimitris Kolovos, Fiona A. C. Polack. An Analysis of Approaches to Model Migration. In Proc. Models and Evolution (MoDSE-MCCM) Workshop, 12th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Model Driven Engineering, Languages and Systems. 2009.
Changing a metamodel can cause inconsistency with instance models. Modelling frameworks such as EMF that implement the OMG’s metamodelling architecture cannot be used to manipulate models that are inconsistent with their metamodel: inconsistent models cannot be loaded. Consequently, developers have to invest eff ort in migrating inconsistent models, to re-establish consistency. This is an example of model and metamodel evolution — indeed, of co-evolution. In their recent book, Mens and Demeyer note that there are new challenges for MDE in controlling and managing model and metamodel evolution. Various approaches to automating model migration have been proposed. In this paper, we demonstrate some of the important limitations of automatic generation of model migration strategies, and identify requirements for improved model and metamodel co-evolution support.