Selecting a Model Interchange Format: The SPOOL Case Study

This research was supported by the SPOOL project organized by CSER (Consortium for Software Engineering Research) which is funded by Bell Canada, NSERC (National Sciences and Research Council of Canada), and NRC (National Research Council of Canada). Guy St-Denis is being funded by a scholarship granted by the FCAR (Formation de Chercheurs et l’Aide à la Recherche) Fund. Abstract The aim of this paper is to provide tool developers with effective strategies to minimize the risks, costs, effort and time involved in handling model interchange issues. Specifically, we establish a requirements list for model interchange formats and highlight the advantages and disadvantages of representative solutions RSF, TA, RDF, XIF and XMI. As a case study, we introduce SPOOL, our prototype environment for design recovery and composition, and discuss the particular project requirements that led us to envision an XMI-based model interchange engine. We then discuss implementation details and relate the lessons learned in pursuing the described path.