ALCHEMIST: a general purpose transformation generator

Greger Lindén, Henry Tirri, and A. Inkeri Verkamo: ALCHEMIST: a general purpose transformation generator. Report C-1995-43, Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki, September 1995. 37 pages. <http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/TR/C-1995/43>

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Abstract

ALCHEMIST is a general purpose transformation generating environment which supports specification, generation, and execution of data transformations. ALCHEMIST allows an abstract specification of the transformation through a window-based interface and supports the generation and compilation of transformation program code from these specifications. Unlike compiler-compilers, ALCHEMIST is intended to automate building transformations between two complex representation formats and is thus especially suitable for constructing transformations between database tools, case tools, graphical editors or text formatters. In this paper we will describe the design principles and the structure of ALCHEMIST, and demonstrate its use. We will also discuss our experiences with several example transformations and present a real-life case study of using ALCHEMIST for interfacing between two software development environments.

Index Terms

Categories and Subject Descriptors:
D.3.4 [Programming Languages]: Processors - Translator writing systems and compile
D.2.2 [Software Engineering]: Tools and Techniques - Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE)

General Terms: Design

Additional Key Words and Phrases: transformation generator, data transformation, structured transformation, tree transformation