1. ¹Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, U.S.A
2. ²ATLAS group (INRIA & LINA), University of Nantes, France

Correspondence: Jeff Gray, Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294-1170, U.S.A. E-mail: gray@cis.uab.edu

Received 2 December 2006; Revised 26 March 2007; Accepted 27 July 2007.

Abstract

Model differentiation techniques, which provide the capability to identify mappings and differences between models, are essential to many model development and management practices. There has been initial research toward model differentiation applied to Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams, but differentiation of domain-specific models has not been explored deeply in the modeling community. Traditional modeling practice using the UML relies on a single fixed general-purpose language (i.e., all UML diagrams conform to a single metamodel). In contrast, Domain-Specific Modeling (DSM) is an emerging model-driven paradigm in which multiple metamodels are used to define various modeling languages that represent the key concepts and abstractions for particular domains. Therefore, domain-specific models may conform to various metamodels, which requires model differentiation algorithms be metamodel-independent and able to apply to multiple domain-specific modeling languages. This paper presents metamodel-independent algorithms and associated tools for detecting mappings and differences between domain-specific models, with facilities for graphical visualization of the detected differences.