Higher-Order Rewriting of Model-to-Text Templates for Integrating Domain-specific Modeling Languages

Domain-specific modeling languages (DSMLs) are commonly used in model-driven development projects. In this context, model-to-text (M2T) transformation templates generate source code from DSML models. When integrating two (or more) DSMLs, the reuse of such templates for the composed DSML would yield a number of benefits, such as, a reduced testing and maintenance effort. However, in order to reuse the original templates for an integrated DSML, potential syntactical mismatches between the templates and the integrated metamodel must be solved. This paper proposes a technology-independent approach to template rewriting based on higher-order model transformations to address such mismatches in an automated manner. By considering M2T generator templates as first-class models and by reusing transformation traces, our approach enables syntactical template rewriting. To demonstrate the feasibility of this rewriting technique, we built a prototype for Eclipse EMF and Epsilon.