Morsa: A Scalable Approach for Persisting and Accessing Large Models

Abstract

Applying Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) in industrial-scale systems requires managing complex models which may be very large. These models must be persisted in a scalable way that allows their manipulation by client applications without fully loading them.

In this paper we propose Morsa, an approach that provides scalable access to large models through load on demand; model persistence is supported by a NoSQL database. We discuss some load on demand algorithms and database design alternatives. A prototype that integrates transparently with EMF is presented and its evaluation demonstrates that it is capable of fully loading large models with a limited amount of memory. Moreover, a benchmark has been executed, exhibiting better performance than the EMF XMI file-based persistence and the most representative model repository, CDO.