A text-based visual notation for the unit testing of model-driven tools

In this paper, we propose a notation that aims to combine the benefits of visual and text-based approaches. The notation is at the same time visual and text-based, as it uses ASCII characters to emulate the familiar graphical notations. In our evaluation based on real models, we identify problematic model shapes challenging the scalability our notation, while finding that it is well-suited to capture typical test models.