A Semi-Automatic Approach for Bridging DSLs With UML

The definition of modeling languages is a key-prerequisite for Model-Driven Engineering (MDE). In this respect, Domain-Specific Languages (DSL) defined in terms of metamodels and UML profiles are often considered as two alternatives. For interoperability reasons, however, the need arises to bridge modeling languages originally defined as DSLs to UML profiles by defining a specific UML profile to represent the domain-specific modeling concepts in UML and model transformations for transforming DSL models to UML models and vice versa. A manual definition of a UML profile typically is a tedious and error-prone task, but contains a high potential for automation. The contribution of this paper is to integrate the so far competing worlds of DSLs and UML.