XML Metadata Interchange

Synonyms

XMI

Definition

XMI (XML Metadata Interchange) is an XML-based integration framework for the exchange of models, and, more generally, any kind of XML data. XMI is used in the integration of tools, repositories, applications, and data warehouses. The framework defines rules for generating XML schemas from a metamodel based on the Metaobject Facility (MOF). XMI is most frequently used as an interchange format for UML, although it can be used with any MOF-compliant language.

Key Points

The motivation for introducing XMI was the need to provide a standard way through which UML tools could exchange UML models. XMI produced by one tool can generally be imported by another tool, which allows exchange of models among tools by different vendors, or the exchange of models with other types of tools upstream or downstream the tool chain. As stated above, XMI is not limited to mapping UML to XML, but it provides rules to generate DTDs or XML schemas and XML documents from any MOF-compliant...