Understanding model evolution through semantically lifting model differences with SiLift

In model-based software development, models are primary artifacts which iteratively evolve and which have many versions during their lifetime. A clear representation of the changes between different versions of a model is the key to understanding and successfully managing the evolution of a model-based system. However, model comparison tools currently available display model differences on a low level of abstraction, namely in terms of basic graph operations on the abstract syntax graph of a model. These low-level model differences are often hard or even impossible to understand for normal tool users who are not familiar with meta-models. In this paper we present SiLift, a generic tool environment which is able to semantically lift low-level differences of EMF-based models into representations of user-level edit operations.