Graph Transformations on the UML Metamodel

The Unified Modeling Language UML is a rich language so that it seems not feasible to give a single semantics for the complete language in one step. In order to define the semantics, this paper proposes to translate as many UML languages features as possible into UML itself. The part of UML which cannot be treated in this way is called the UML core. It turns out that for the first step, namely the translation of UML language features into the UML core, graph transformations are an ideal language for expressing the required manipulations and the UML metamodel gives the necessary fundamental vocabulary and notions.