Therefore, this bachelors' project shall examine how scalability problems of EMF can be overcome. A working prototype shall be implemented and tested besides theoretical solution concepts.

Example problems shall be analyzed to understand the specific problems of scalability. Possible problems are:

• efficient memory management of large models
• decoupling of models also in case of bidirectionally navigable associations
• efficient evaluation of OCL expressions in case of large instance models
• incremental evaluation of OCL expressions
• incremental model transformation and synchronization

Based on these analyses, concepts shall be developed and validated against the example problems. Based on these concepts, a scalable version of EMF shall be developed. Aim of the bachelors' project is to explore, for which cases scalability needs to be improved and how such a scalable variant of EMF could look like.

The students can make use of existing technologies to realize their concepts. EMF is publicly available software. Furthermore, the research group can provide technologies for efficient and incremental model transformation and synchronization.

The prototype shall be integrated into the Eclipse platform and, therefore, should be development with Java. A tutorial on the necessary tools and technologies will be held in the course of this project.

The project is conducted in cooperation with SAP AG. The students will act as contractors of SAP AG. SAP AG will act as customer and domain expert. This especially applies to capturing requirements but also to evaluating the project's results.

It can be expected, that after a successful conclusion of the project, a part-time job at HPI and/or a master's thesis in cooperation with SAP AG are possible.

The procedure of the project will be aligned to capturing requirements, developing solution concepts and realizing and evaluationg a scalable variant of EMF. A goal-oriented approach shall be achieved by short iterations and feedback loops with the customer in meetings in Potsdam and Walldorf.

During the preparation phase, basic knowledge about meta-modeling, model transformation and sychronization and efficient data structures will imparted. Example tasks will solved by a single person or in small teams and the results presented to the whole team.

Students willing to participate in this project should be interested in modeling and model-driven development. They also should familiarize themselves with the necessary methodologies during the project.

The project starts on October, 1st 2009.

For further information contact Prof. Dr. Holger Giese (Building A, room A-2.5, holger.giese(at)hpi.uni-potsdam.de). Contactperson at SAP is Dr. Axel Uhl (Chief Development Architect bei der SAP AG, axel.uhl(at)sap.com).