Towards Processing YAML Documents with Model Management Languages

YAML is a widely used textual format for capturing structured data. Despite its widespread use by software engineering practitioners, there is little support for YAML in model management (e.g. model-to-text, model-to-model) languages. This paper proposes an approach for bridging the conceptual gap between contemporary model management languages and YAML. A technical solution is presented for enabling the use of model management tasks over models captured in YAML. Our solution is evaluated in an industrial case study on cloud infrastructure automation, involving the use of model transformations that transform EMF models into YAML models, with the goal of producing Infrastructure as Code through Ansible Playbooks.