Effective detection of model changes

Model-driven software development (MDSD) is promising alternative in software engineering that proposes the use of models, not only as documentation artifacts, but also as first-class entities. Over the past few years, this approach has gained importance due to its proven benefits in terms of reusability and flexibility. However, the well-known problem of software evolution is also relevant in MDSD. When a model evolves, several dependent artifacts may be affected and migration would be necessary. In this paper, we present an approach that aims at effectively detecting changes in models. This approach corresponds to a first step towards the implementation of migration strategies in the context of MDSD. We validate the proposal with the classical example of evolution of model classes from UML 1.4 to UML 2.0.