Towards a generic operation recorder for model evolution

There are two basic kinds of approaches to track model evolution: State-based approaches derive the changes by comparing model versions, whereas operation-based approaches record the changes when performed on the model. Since operation-based approaches record changes more accurately, they better support various use cases of model evolution. However, operation-based approaches are not very widespread in both industry and research, as extensive tool support is required to record and persist the changes. To lower the barrier for building tool support for operation-based approaches, we propose a generic operation recorder. The operation recorder covers a number of use cases and is both customizable and extensible. The implementation of the operation recorder is based on the widely used Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF).