Taming the shrew - Resolving structural heterogeneities with hierarchical CPNs

Model transformations play a key role in the vision of Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) whereby the overcoming of structural heterogeneities, being a result of applying different meta-modeling constructs for the same semantic concept, is a challenging, recurring problem, urgently demanding for reuse of transformations. In this respect, an approach is required which (i) abstracts from the concrete execution language allowing to focus on the resolution of structural heterogeneities, (ii) keeps the impedance mismatch between specification and execution low enabling seamless debuggability, and (iii) provides formal underpinnings enabling model checking. Therefore, we propose to specify model transformations by applying a set of abstract mapping operators (MOPs), each resolving a certain kind of structural heterogeneity. For specifying the operational semantics of the MOPs, we propose to use Transformation Nets (TNs), a DSL on top of Colored Petri Nets (CPNs), since it allows (i) to keep the impedance mismatch between specification and execution low and (ii) to analyze model transformations by evaluating behavioral properties of CPNs.