On the Evolution of Modeling Ecosystems: An Evaluation of Co-Evolution Approaches

In Model-Driven Engineering, several artifacts together form a so-called modeling ecosystem, comprising metamodels defining prevailing concepts of a domain and depending artifacts using these concepts. However, evolutionary pressure causes the need for changes in the metamodel, necessitating all artifacts in the modeling ecosystem to migrate to again conform to the evolved version of the metamodel, i.e., they have to co-evolve accordingly. Several approaches for the co-evolution of artifacts have been proposed, however, they differ substantially from each other and, thus, an in-depth investigation of these approaches is needed to allow for a systematic comparison. Therefore, the contribution of this paper is a dedicated evaluation framework for coevolution approaches focusing on aspects relevant in the context of modeling ecosystems, and its application to a representative set of recent approaches. Based on this evaluation lessons learned as well as future research lines are presented.