MoCoP: Towards a Model Clone Portal

Abstract

Widespread and mature practice of model-driven engineering is leading to a growing number of modeling artifacts and challenges in their management. Model clone detection (MCD) is an important approach for managing and maintaining modeling artifacts. While its counterpart in traditional source code development, code clone detection, is enjoying popularity and more than two decades of development, MCD is still in its infancy in terms of research and tooling. We aim to develop a portal for model clone detection, MoCoP, as a central hub to mitigate adoption barriers and foster MCD research. In this short paper, we present our vision for MoCoP and its features and goals. We discuss MoCoP's key components that we plan on realizing in the short term including public tooling, curated data sets, and a body of MCD knowledge. Our longer term goals include a dedicated service-oriented infrastructure, contests, and forums. We believe MoCoP will strengthen MCD research, tooling, and the community, which in turn will lead to better quality, maintenance, and scalability for model-driven engineering practices.