Reality Check for Model Transformation Reuse: The ATL Transformation Zoo Case Study

Model transformations play a major role in model-driven engineering. For increasing development productivity as well as quality of model transformations, different kinds of reuse mechanisms have been proposed. However, it remains unclear to which extent reuse mechanisms have made their way into practical application. Thus, this paper presents an empirical study on the ATL Transformation Zoo to analyze the application frequency of reuse mechanisms. For this, we developed a semi-automated process for extracting transformation projects from the ATL Transformation Zoo, which are classified and analyzed with respect to the application frequency of reuse mechanisms. Finally, limitations of current reuse mechanisms, which potentially hinder their practical applicability, are critically reflected, pointing out further research directions.