How is ATL Really Used? Language Feature Use in the ATL Zoo

Abstract

Studies of code repositories have long been used to understand the use of programming languages and to provide insight into how they should evolve. Such studies can highlight features that are rarely used and can safely be removed to simplify the language. Conversely, combinations of features that are frequently used together can be identified and possibly replaced with new features to improve the user experience. Unfortunately, this kind of research has not been as popular in Model Driven Development (MDD). More specifically, using repositories of model transformations (in any language) to understand how the features of these languages are used has not been investigated much, despite its potential benefits. In this paper, we study the use of the ATL model transformation language in an ATL transformation repository. We identify three research questions aimed at providing insight into how ATL's features are actually used. Using the TXL source transformation language, we implement a parser-based analyzer to extract information from the ATL Zoo. We use this information to answer these research questions and provide additional observations based on manual inspection of ATL artifacts.