COMDES is a component-based framework that facilitates the development of real-time embedded software systems from a repository of prefabricated components. The authors introduce a semantic-preserving model transformation to convert COMDES design models into Simulink analysis models, and to analyze them in the Simulink environment. They use the Ecore metamodel and the ATLAS transformation language (ATL) to implement the transformation.

The paper presents a viable and sound approach. However, converting a COMDES design model as a whole to a Simulink analysis model is questionable. It would also be possible to generate design models or source code directly from Simulink models if there were one-to-one mapping. As claimed in the paper, the COMDES framework emphasizes the separation of concerns (SoC) so that, using the appropriate tools, different aspects of the system behavior can be verified separately--for example, in the Simulink environment, numerical simulations can analyze continuous behavior, whereas model-checking tools, like Uppaal, can analyze reactive behavior. This claim is not consistent with the presented approach in which the whole COMDES design model, including the parts that specify the reactive behavior, is transformed into Simulink analysis models.

The paper does suffer from a few weaknesses. First, the paper lacks a discussion on the related work. Second, although the overall process and the basic principles of COMDES are in line with the software product line approach, this is not mentioned at all. Finally, most of the references are either self-references or links to utilized toolsets.