On Leveraging Executable Language Engineering for Domain-Specific Transformation Languages

An increasing number of domain-specific transformation languages (DSTLs) are used to define model transformations in specific contexts. This shift led to many approaches to define new DSTLs and associated tools, either through frameworks or complete generative approachs. In parallel, the fields of language engineering and model execution have seen the development of many approaches to efficiently define new executable domain-specific modeling languages (xDSMLs), and to provide tools (e.g., editor, debugger) for any newly defined xDSML. In this position paper, we propose to study how the engineering of DSTLs could benefit from state-of-the-art xDSML engineering approaches. We first demonstrate why a DSTL is an xDSML with specific characteristics. We then give a selection of research directions to apply xDSML engineering approaches on DSTLs.