Model-driven engineering in RDF - a way to version control

Abstract

Version control is a long-standing open problem for model-driven software engineering (MDSE). When the users work with diagrammatic models, conventional text-based version control is of little use, as the textual representation may change even when no change is made to the semantic model. A similar problem exists in semantic technologies, but recent research has given us a couple of very promising solutions for Resource Description Framework (RDF) graphs. In this paper we demonstrate how the Diagram Predicate Framework (DPF), a modelling framework in MDSE, can be represented unambiguously as RDF graphs. The RDF representation is then used as a foundation to analyse conflict resolution for version control of DPF models.