Towards Reinforcement Learning for In-Place Model Transformations

Model-driven optimization has gained much interest in the last years which resulted in several dedicated extensions for in-place model transformation engines. The main idea is to exploit domain-specific languages to define models which are optimized by applying a set of model transformation rules. Objectives are guiding the optimization processes which are currently mostly realized by meta-heuristic searchers such as different kinds of Genetic Algorithms. However, meta-heuristic search approaches are currently challenged by reinforcement learning approaches for solving optimization problems. In this new ideas paper, we apply for the first time reinforcement learning for in-place model transformations. In particular, we extend an existing model-driven optimization approach with reinforcement learning techniques. We experiment with value-based and policy-based techniques. We investigate several case studies for validating the feasibility of using reinforcement learning for model-driven optimization and compare the performance against existing approaches. The initial evaluation shows promising results but also helped in identifying future research lines for the whole model transformation community.