Towards Model Product Lines: Composition of EMF Models

State-of-the-art Product Line Engineering (PLE) tools, while powerful and supporting of significant PLE scenarios, generally lack support for EMF (Eclipse Modeling Framework) models. The limited support is due not to insufficient adoption of EMF, but rather to the absence of a clear semantics for EMF model composition. This paper defines composition semantics for EMF models so that they become first class citizens in PLE, enabling Model Product Lines (MPL). As a result, any EMF language can be used in developing an MPL. By using EMF models directly as features, MPLs can leverage the ecosystem of tools that support EMF, specifically to improve PLE.