A survey and comparison of transformation tools based on the transformation tool contest

• Many state-of-the-art graph rewriting and model transformation tools competed at the Transformation Tool Contest 2011.
• We give the most encompassing survey of transformation tools so far, based on an illustrative Hello World case.
• We compare the tools and their languages in detail, based on an elaborate taxonomy.
• Researchers gain an overview of the field, prospective users get help in choosing in between the tools.
• All tools can be tested online with a SHARE virtual machine.

Model transformation is one of the key tasks in model-driven engineering and relies on the efficient matching and modification of graph-based data structures; its sibling graph rewriting has been used to successfully model problems in a variety of domains. Over the last years, a wide range of graph and model transformation tools have been developed – all of them with their own particular strengths and typical application domains. In this paper, we give a survey and a comparison of the model and graph transformation tools that participated at the Transformation Tool Contest 2011. The reader gains an overview of the field and its tools, based on the illustrative solutions submitted to a Hello World task, and a comparison alongside a detailed taxonomy. The article is of interest to researchers in the field of model and graph transformation, as well as to software engineers with a transformation task at hand who have to choose a tool fitting to their needs. All solutions referenced in this article provide a SHARE demo. It supported the peer-review process for the contest, and now allows the reader to test the tools online.