Section: Software

The ATL Model Transformation Language

Participants : Frédéric Jouault [ contact ] , Jean Bézivin.

URL: http://www.eclipse.org/m2m/atl/

With an eye on the normative work of the OMG (MOF, OCL, QVT, etc.), a new conceptual framework has been developed based on a second generation model transformation language called ATL. Although ATL influenced the OMG standard, the approach is more general as discussed in [8] .

Due to the previous iterations, the architecture of the ATL model transformation language is highly modular and based on a generic model engineering virtual machine and on a bootstrapped compiler itself running on this virtual machine. The central idea in Frédéric Jouault's Ph.D. thesis [45] of using MDE tools to build other MDE tools (or using DSLs to build other DSLs) has been quite productive. Seeking conceptual simplicity also led to implementation efficiency since ATL currently provides one of the most efficient solutions for model transformation.

The decision was taken early to develop the new framework as an open-source solution. The Eclipse community provided a rich environment for this. In addition to being based on Eclipse, the framework was made fully available on Eclipse.org , which allowed to build a strong user community and to get contributor help. In 2004 IBM gave an Eclipse innovation award to the ATL project. The CARROLL consortium (Thales, CEA, and INRIA) and the ModelWare European Integrated project funded the development of ATL. In 2007 Eclipse recognized ATL as one central solution for model transformation and promoted it to the M2M project (see Eclipse.org/m2m ). There are more than 200 industrial and academic sites using ATL today, and several Ph.D. thesis in the world are based on this work.