A generic model decomposition technique and its application to the Eclipse modeling framework

Model-driven software development aims at easing the process of
software development by using models as primary artifacts. Although
less complex than the real systems they are based on, models tend to
be complex nevertheless, thus making the task of handling them
non-trivial in many cases. In this paper we propose a generic model
decomposition technique to facilitate model management by
decomposing complex models into smaller sub-models that conform to
the same metamodel as the original model. The technique is based
upon a formal foundation that consists of a formal capturing of the
concepts of models, metamodels, and model conformance; a formal
constraint language based on EssentialOCL; and a set of formally
proved properties of the technique. We organize the decomposed
sub-models in a mathematical structure as a lattice, and design a
linear-time algorithm for constructing this decomposition.

The generic model decomposition technique is applied to the Eclipse
Modeling Framework (EMF) and the result is used to build a solution
to a specific model comprehension problem of Ecore models based upon
model pruning. We report two case studies of the model comprehension
method: one in BPMN and the other in fUML.