Edelta: an approach for defining and applying reusable metamodel refactorings

Metamodels can be considered one of the key artifacts of any model-based project. Similarly to other software artifacts, metamodels are expected to evolve during their life- cycle and consequently it is crucial to develop approaches and tools supporting the definition and re-use of metamodel refactorings in a disciplined way. This paper proposes Edelta, a domain specific language for specifying reusable libraries of metamodel refactorings. The language allows both atomic and complex changes and it is supported by an Eclipse-based IDE. The developed supporting environment allows the developer to apply refactorings both in a batch manner and in a step-by-step fashion, which provides developers with an immediate view of the evolving Ecore model before actually changing it.