Open meta-modelling frameworks via meta-object protocols

Cuadrado, Jesús Sánchez; Lara, Juan de

doi:10.1016/j.jss.2018.07.023

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…PCs are specified as @Presence annotations. This is possible as, similar to Java [CdL16], MetaDepth permits defining annotation types by providing their syntax, parameters, and the kind of elements they can annotate (models, clabjects or fields) [CdL18]. This definition is a meta-model, and so, when annotations are parsed, they are transformed into a model conforming to such meta-model.…”

Section: Top-down Creation Of Language Familiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Language Family Engineering with Product Lines of Multi-level Models

Lara

Guerra

2021

Form. Asp. Comput.

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Modelling is an essential activity in software engineering. It typically involves two meta-levels: one includes meta-models that describe modelling languages, and the other contains models built by instantiating those meta-models. Multi-level modelling generalizes this approach by allowing models to span an arbitrary number of meta-levels. A scenario that profits from multi-level modelling is the definition of language families that can be specialized (e.g., for different domains) by successive refinements at subsequent meta-levels, hence promoting language reuse. This enables an open set of variability options given by all possible specializations of the language family. However, multi-level modelling lacks the ability to express closed variability regarding the availability of language primitives or the possibility to opt between alternative primitive realizations. This limits the reuse opportunities of a language family. To improve this situation, we propose a novel combination of product lines with multi-level modelling to cover both open and closed variability. Our proposal is backed by a formal theory that guarantees correctness, enables top-down and bottom-up language variability design, and is implemented atop the MetaDepth multi-level modelling tool.

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Section: Top-down Creation Of Language Familiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Annotations in MetaDepth can attach actions to be triggered upon certain modelling events, like instantiation or value assignment. These actions are defined via a meta-object protocol (MOP) [CdL18,KR91]. This way, we have defined a MOP with actions for the PC annotations, to help instantiating deep model PLs.…”

Section: Using Language Familiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language Family Engineering with Product Lines of Multi-level Models

Lara

Guerra

2021

Form. Asp. Comput.

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“…Cuadrado and de Lara [18] proposed open meta-modeling frameworks, which can be extended and configured via the so-called meta-object protocols (MOPs) [31]. The authors identify that currently different multi-level tools implement slight variations of core multi-level modeling concepts, with the result of being incompatible with each other.…”

Section: Multi-level Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Playground for multi-level modeling constructs

et al. 2021

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In recent years, multi-level modeling has become more and more popular. It is mainly due to the fact that multi-level modeling aims to reduce or even totally eliminate any accidental complexity inadvertently created as by-product in traditional model design. Moreover, besides reducing model complexity, multi-level modeling also improves on general comprehension of models. The key enablers of multi-level modeling are the concepts of clabjects and deep instantiation. The latter is often governed by the potency notion, of which many different interpretations and variations emerged over the years. However, there exist also some approaches that disregard the potency notion. Thus, multi-level modeling approaches tend to take advantage of different theoretical and practical backgrounds. In this paper, we propose a unifying framework, the Multi-Level Modeling Playground (MLMP), which is a validating modeling environment for multi-level modeling research. The MLMP environment is based on our multi-layer modeling framework (the Dynamic Multi-Layer Algebra), which provides useful mechanisms to validate different multi-level modeling constructs. Since beyond the structure also the well-formedness rules of the modeling constructs can be specified, our proposed MLMP environment delivers several practical benefits: i) well-formedness is always verified, ii) multi-level constructs can be experimented with independently of any concrete tool chains, and iii) relationships (i.e., correlations or exclusions) between different multi-level constructs can be easily investigated in practice. Also, the capability of the environment is demonstrated via complete examples inspired by state-of-the-art research literature.

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“…The aim of the language is to support the definition of many different languages, all of which have the same (meta)*-representation and whose semantics are defined using the same core concepts that are based on a kernel meta-object-protocol (MOP). MOPs have been used elsewhere to support programming language engineering (Kiczales et al 1991) and meta-modelling (Cuadrado & de Lara 2018); the aim of this article is to combine the benefits of both by applying programming language engineering to modelling languages. The language is evaluated by showing how it can build itself, can support multiple concrete syntax definitions, and can define an extended meta-language based on potency.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Meta-Circular Basis for Model-Based Language Engineering.

Clark¹

2020

JOT

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Meta-modelling is a technique that facilitates the construction of new languages to be used in system development. Although meta-modelling is supported by a number of tools and technologies, notably the Meta Object Facility from the OMG, there is no widely accepted precise basis for meta-modelling that can be used to develop and study language-based approaches to system development. Recent advances in meta-modelling have proposed several approaches to mixing types and instances, and allowing constraints to hold over multiple levels. This article proposes a collection of key characteristic features that are used to define a foundational self-contained unifying metalanguage that is evaluated through several examples.

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Open meta-modelling frameworks via meta-object protocols

Cited by 6 publications

References 68 publications

Language Family Engineering with Product Lines of Multi-level Models

Language Family Engineering with Product Lines of Multi-level Models

Playground for multi-level modeling constructs

A Meta-Circular Basis for Model-Based Language Engineering.

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