A Metamodel-Based Matching Algorithm for Model Transformations

Metamodeling techniques have become the subject of research in the last decades. Different approaches of software development emphasize the use of models at all phases of the design and implementation. With metamodels, we can define the concepts of models in concrete domains. Model transformations are used to convert models to other ones. To define rules of transformations, we need to declare, which part of the input models has to be converted. By means of metamodels we can define more complex structures to be matched. In this case we need to find an instance of the defined metamodel in the input graph. The efficiency of the matching algorithms is critical during the application of model transformations. In this paper, a matching algorithm is presented that is able to find all instances of metamodels in arbitrary input models.