Declarative approach for model composition

Model-based development involves construction, integration, and maintenance of complex models. One of the key problems in model-based development is composing a set of distributed models into a single seamless model. In this paper we propose a declarative approach for model composition, which augments and strengthens existing structural and heuristic approaches. In our approach, the desired model compositions are constrained by a set of declarative properties, which drive the merge process. Only model compositions that satisfy the specified properties and, possibly, additional model composition restrictions are automatically generated and presented to the model analyst for a review and further modifications. Since our framework is iterative, properties and restrictions can be reviewed and refined as well. We illustrate our ideas by defining a proof-of-concept prototype implementation of the declarative model composition framework using the Alloy Analyzer. Copyright 2008 ACM.