ModGraph meets Xcore: Combining Rule-Based and Procedural Behavioral Modeling for EMF
Sabine Winetzhammer, Bernhard Westfechtel · 2013
Abstract: Model-driven software engineering aims at increasing productivity by developing high-level executable models. The Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) significantly contributes toward this goal. Unfortunately, EMF supports only struc-tural models based on the Ecore metamodel. Recently, Xcore has been developed to extend EMF with behavioral modeling. To this end, Xcore provides a single textual language for both structural and behavioral modeling. While Xcore follows a proce-dural approach to behavioral modeling, ModGraph is an EMF-based tool based on a rule-based paradigm (graph transformation rules, which allow to specify behavior in a declarative way). The combination of EMF, Xcore, and ModGraph results in an environment for model-driven software engineering which provides full-fledged support for both structural and behavioral modeling. Altogether, we obtain an en-vironment in which software engineers are concerned only with models rather than with programs.