Supporting collaborative work by preserving model meaning when merging graphical models

Abstract

An important aspect of support for distributed work is to enable users at different sites to work collaboratively; models need to be accessible by more than one user at a time allowing them to modify them independently from each other supporting parallel evolution [1]. As design is a largely creative process users also use layout to convey meaning. However, tools for merging such models tend to do so from a purely structural perspective, thus losing an important aspect of the meaning conveyed by the modeller. This paper presents a novel approach to model merging which allows us to preserve such layout meaning when merging. We first present evidence from an industrial study, which demonstrates how users use layout to convey specific meanings. We then introduce an approach to merging which will allow for the preservation of meaning and finally describe a prototype tool. © 2012 International Federation for Information Processing.