Model Integration Through Mega Operations

With the advent of the Model Driven Architecture, models are replacing code as the major artifact in software development. A critical success factor for this is the possibility to derive models from each other in terms of transformations. Existing approaches, such as the forthcoming QVT-standard, will provide a proper foundation for transforming models on a fine-grained level. They, however, do not provide appropriate abstraction mechanisms for different integration scenarios, such as integrating models representing cross-cutting concerns or integrating models even from different domains. This paper proposes so called mega operations representing an abstraction mechanism which allow to specify model integration at the metalevel, thus forming the prerequisite to automatically derive a set of directives carrying out the actual integration at the model level. To cope with different integration scenarios, tight as well as loose integration of models is supported on top of a QVT-like language.