H. Brunelière, J. Garcia Perez, M. Wimmer, J. Cabot: EMF Views: A View Mechanism for Integrating Heterogeneous Models, 34th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER 2015), Stockholm, Sweden, 19.10.2015 - 22.10.2015; in Proceedings of 34th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER 2015), Springer, LNCS 9381 (2015), ISBN: 978-3-319-25263-6, pages 317 - 325. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-25264-3_23
Modeling complex systems involves dealing with several heterogeneous and interrelated models defined using a variety of languages (UML, ER, BPMN, DSLs, etc.). These models must be frequently combined in different cross-domain perspectives to provide stakeholders the view of the system they need to best perform their tasks. Several model composition approaches have already been proposed addressing this problem. Nevertheless, they present some important limitations concerning efficiency, interoperability and synchronization between the base models and the composed ones. As an alternative we introduce EMF Views, an approach coming with a dedicated language and tooling for defining views on potentially heterogeneous models. Similarly to views in databases, model views are not materialized but instead redirect all model access and manipulation requests to the base models from which they are obtained. This is realized in a transparent way for both the modeler and the other modeling tools using the concerned (meta)models.