A compositional approach to bidirectional model transformation

Bidirectional model transformation plays an important role in maintaining consistency between two models, and has many potential applications in software development, including model synchronization, round-trip engineering, software evolution, multiple-view software development, and reverse engineering. However, unclear bidirectional semantics, domain-specific bidirectionalization method, and lack of systematic development framework are known problems that prevent it from being practically used. In this paper, we propose a novel compositional framework for bidirectional model transformation based on an existing graph querying language UnQL, so that one can develop various useful bidirectional model transformation by combination of a fixed number of primitive bidirectional model transformations. We have implemented a prototype system, and the experimental results show promise of the new approach.