VMQL: A visual language for ad-hoc model querying

In large scale model based development, analysis level models are more like knowledge bases than engineering artifacts. Their effectiveness depends, to a large degree, on the ability of domain experts to retrieve information from them ad-hoc. For large scale models, however, existing query facilities are inadequate.The visual model query language (VMQL) is a novel approach that uses the respective modeling language of the source model as the query language, too. The semantics of VMQL is defined formally based on graphs, so that query execution can be defined as graph matching. VMQL has been applied to several visual modeling languages, implemented, and validated in small case studies, and several controlled experiments.

Research highlights► Information retrieval is a key activity with large-scale domain models. ► Existing query facilities are inadequate for this application. ► VMQL is a visual query language suitable for ad hoc querying of such models. ► VMQL has been validated by a prototype implementation and case studies. ► Controlled experiments show VMQL has superior usability than languages like OCL.