ALCHEMIST: A general purpose transformation generator

Abstract

ALCHEMIST is a general purpose transformation generating environment, which supports specification, generation and execution of data transformations. ALCHEMIST allows an abstract specification of the transformation through a window-based interface and supports the generation and compilation of transformation program code from these specifications. Unlike compiler-compilers, ALCHEMIST is intended to automate building transformations between two complex representation formats and is thus especially suitable for constructing transformations between database tools, CASE tools, graphical editors or text formatters. In this paper we describe the design principles and the structure of ALCHEMIST, and demonstrate its use. We also discuss our experiences with several example transformations and present a real-life case study of using ALCHEMIST for interfacing two software development environments.