MegaL goes Nantes

The Software Languages Team in Koblenz, with potent support by visiting scientist Jean-Marie Favre is getting increasingly excited and knowledgeable about megamodels for software technologies and software products. MegaL is the megamodeling language under development. During upcoming research visits, I expect to present MegaL: its rationale, some applications, and ongoing research. The first presentation of this kind is to take place in Nantes in the AtlanMod team. The talk announcement follows.

Title: A megamodel of the ATL model transformation language and toolkit

Abstract: According to http://www.eclipse.org/atl/, "ATL (ATL Transformation Language) is a model transformation language and toolkit. In the field of Model-Driven Engineering (MDE), ATL provides ways to produce a set of target models from a set of source models." We would like to deeply understand the linguistic architecture of ATL in terms of all the involved software languages, metamodels, technologies, and relationships between all of them. To this end, we leverage a suitable form of megamodeling, as it is supported by the (mega)modeling language MegaL. In this manner, we discover some shortcomings of common, informal explanations of ATL and opportunities for highly systematic discussion of ATL.

Acknowledgements: Joint work with Jean-Marie Favre, Martin Leinberger, Thomas Schmorleiz, and Andrei Varanovich.

Links:
  • A related paper on megamodeling: [.html]
  • Slide deck of the talk: [.pdf]

Bio: Ralf Lämmel is Professor of Computer Science at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Koblenz-Landau since July 2007. In the past, he held positions at Microsoft Corp., Free University of Amsterdam, CWI (Dutch Center for Mathematics and Computer Science), and the University of Rostock, Germany. Ralf Lämmel's speciality is "software language engineering", but he is generally interested in themes that combine software engineering and programming languages. His research and teaching interests include program transformation, software re-engineering, grammar-based methods as well as model-driven and model-based methods. Ralf Lämmel is a committed member of the research community; he is one of the founding fathers of the international summer school series on Generative and Transformational Techniques on Software Engineering (GTTSE) as well as the international conference on Software Language Engineering (SLE).

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