Synchronization of textual and visual representations of evolving information in the context of model-based development

Model-driven approaches try to improve the productivity of the traditional software development by focusing on a special problem using high abstraction models. Comparing to the source code, specific visualization of models inspired by these domains is very advantageous and closer to the human thinking. Though, in many cases the details can be efficiently edited only in textual form: visual models are sometimes not expressive or effective enough, and could be circumstantial to use. The common problem of typical modeling tools is that they provide support for only one kind of model representation, but it would be more effective if two or more representation possibilities could be mixed. In this paper, we suggest an approach, which supports the concurrent evolution of the artifacts in both textual and visual way. The declarative textual syntax mapping is defined in a way to facilitate bi-directional conversion. To synchronize, and merge the changes of the different kinds of artifacts incrementally, a three-way comparison is applied.