Using rule overriding to improve reusability and understandability of Dynamic Meta Modeling specifications

Dynamic Meta Modeling (DMM) is a visual semantics specification technique targeted at languages based on a metamodel. A DMM specification consists of a runtime metamodel and operational rules which describe how instances of the runtime metamodel change over time. A known deficiency of the DMM approach is that it does not support the refinement of a DMM specification, e.g., in the case of defining the semantics for a refined and extended domain-specific language (DSL). Up to now, DMM specifications could only be reused by adding or removing DMM rules. In this paper, we enhance DMM such that DMM rules can override other DMM rules, similar to a method being overridden in a subclass, and we show how rule overriding can be realized with the graph transformation tool GROOVE. We argue that rule overriding does not only have positive impact on reusability, but also improves the intuitive understandability of DMM semantics specifications. & 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.