Abstract
Meta-modelling is a key technique in Model Driven Engineering, where it is used for language engineering and domain modelling. However, mainstream approaches like the OMG’s Meta-Object Facility provide little support for abstraction, modularity, reusability and extendibility of (meta-)models, behaviours and transformations.
In order to alleviate this weakness, we bring three elements of generic programming into meta-modelling: concepts, templates and mixin layers. Concepts permit an additional typing for models, enabling the definition of behaviours and transformations independently of meta-models, making specifications reusable. Templates use concepts to express requirements on their generic parameters, and are applicable to models and meta-models. Finally, we define functional layers by means of meta-model mixins which can extend other meta-models.
As a proof of concept we also report on MetaDepth, a multi-level meta-modelling framework that implements these ideas.
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de Lara, J., Guerra, E. (2010). Generic Meta-modelling with Concepts, Templates and Mixin Layers. In: Petriu, D.C., Rouquette, N., Haugen, Ø. (eds) Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems. MODELS 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6394. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16145-2_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16145-2_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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