Lessons learned from building a graph transformation system

Abstract

Model-driven software development is a language-and transformation-based paradigm, where the various development tasks of engineers are cast in this framework. During the past decade we have developed, evolved, and applied in practical projects a manifestation of this principle through a suite of tools we call the Model-Integrated Computing suite. Graph transformations are fundamental to this environment and tools for constructing model translators, for the specification of the semantics of languages, for the evolution of modeling languages, models, and their transformations have been built. Designing and building these tools have taught us interesting lessons about graph transformation techniques, language engineering, scalability and abstractions, pragmatic semantics, verification, and evolutionary changes in tools and designs. In the paper we briefly summarize the techniques and tools we have developed and used, and highlight our experience in constructing and using them. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.