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Context Model driven development envisages the use of model transformations to evolve models. Model transformation languages, developed for this task, are touted with many benefits over general purpose programming languages. However, a large number of these claims have not yet been substantiated. They are also made without the context necessary to be able to critically assess their merit or built meaningful empirical studies around them. Objective The objective of our work is to elicit the reasoning, influences and background knowledge that lead people to assume benefits or drawbacks of model transformation languages. Method We conducted a large-scale interview study involving 56 participants from research and industry. Interviewees were presented with claims about model transformation languages and were asked to provide reasons for their assessment thereof. We qualitatively analysed the responses to find factors that influence the properties of model transformation languages as well as explanations as to how exactly they do so. Results Our interviews show, that general purpose expressiveness of GPLs, domain specific capabilities of MTLs as well as tooling all have strong influences on how people view properties of model transformation languages. Moreover, the Choice of MTL, the Use Case for which a transformation should be developed as well as the Skill s of involved stakeholders have a moderating effect on the influences, by changing the context to consider. Conclusion There is a broad body of experience, that suggests positive and negative influences for properties of MTLs. Our data suggests, that much needs to be done in order to convey the viability of model transformation languages. Efforts to provide more empirical substance need to be undergone and lacklustre language capabilities and tooling need to be improved upon. We suggest several approaches for this that can be based on the results of the presented study., publishedVersion

Dissertation, RWTH Aachen University, 2022; Aachen : VDI Verlag GmbH, Fortschritt-Berichte VDI. Reihe 10, Informatik, Kommunikation 876, XI, 180 Seiten : Illustrationen, Diagramme (2022). doi:10.18154/RWTH-2022-03396 = Dissertation, RWTH Aachen University, 2022, As part of the future project Industry 4.0 of the High-Tech Strategy of the German Federal Government, the concept of the asset administration shell is being developed. The result is a uniform interface and a meta model for accessing the information of an asset. This information is summarized in information models, each of which represents an aspect of an asset and is used for a specific use case. Due to the increasing number of communicating devices in the industrial context, the increased use of information for value-added services and the integration to complex, intelligent machines and plants, concepts for interoperability are coming into focus. Semantic interoperability is a key goal in the exchange of asset information. Since different stakeholders require different information models, a variety of these information models will exist. These information models may semantically contain the same information, but may be modeled or compiled differently. Additionally, there will be different versions of these information models. This leads to a semantic interoperability problem and is difficult to manage by manually transforming the data because of the large number of information models and assets that are digitally managed. For this reason a concept for semantic interoperability between information models is presented in this thesis. Based on an analysis of existing methods and approaches to achieve semantic interoperability, the concept of model transformation is used to solve the problem. For asset-related information exchange, current standardized models are compared and the concept of the asset administration shell is used as an application example. Based on this application example, the difference between syntactic and semantic transformations is introduced and a classification of the transformation is performed using previously defined features. On this basis, requirements for a transformation language are determined and existing languages are evaluated with respect to their usability. The result of the requirements analysis is that so far no language exists that fulfills all requirements. Therefore a new model transformation language is derived. This is described generically and is concretized for the concept of the asset administration shell. Both the abstract and the concrete syntax as well as the required syntax rules are presented. A prototypical realization of a transformation system shows the application of the language and enables the execution of model transformations between arbitrary information models. Finally, an evaluation of the language is presented based on three selected use cases., Published by VDI Verlag GmbH, Aachen