T. Reiter, M. Wimmer, H. Kargl: Towards a runtime model based on colored Petri-nets for the execution of model transformations, 3rd Workshop on Models and Aspects - Handling Crosscutting Concerns in MDSD, Berlin, Germany; 30.07.2007 - 03.08.2007, in Forschungsbericht der Fakultät IV - Elektrotechnik und Informatik, 6 (2007), ISSN: 1436-9915; pages 19 - 23. pdf
Existing model transformation languages, which range from purely imperative to fully declarative approaches, have the advantage of either explicitly providing statefulness and the ability to define control flow, or offering a raised level of abstraction through automatic rule ordering and application. Existing approaches trying to combine the strengths of both paradigms do so on the language level, only, without considering the benefits of integrating imperative and declarative paradigms in the underlying execution model. Hence, this paper proposes a transformation execution model based on colored Petri-nets, which allows to combine the statefulness of imperative approaches as well the raised level of abstraction from declarative approaches. Furthermore, we show how a Petri-net based execution model lends itself naturally to the integration of an aspect-oriented style of transformation definition, as transformation rules can be triggered not only upon the input model, but on the state of the transformation execution itself.