Translating OCL to graph patterns

Abstract

Model-driven tools use model queries for many purposes, including validation of well-formedness rules and specification of derived features. The majority of declarative model query corpus available in industry appears to use the OCL language. Graph pattern based queries, however, would have a number of advantages due to their more abstract specification, such as performance improvements through advanced query evaluation techniques. As query performance can be a key issue with large models, evaluating graph patterns instead of OCL queries could be useful in practice. The current paper presents an automatic mapping from a large sublanguage of OCL expressions to equivalent graph patterns in the dialect of EMF-IncQuery. Validation of benefits is carried out by performance measurements according to an existing benchmark.