On the search for a level-agnostic modelling language

Abstract

The use of models is increasing in software engineering, especially within the MDE initiative. Models are usually communicated by visualizing them, typically using a graphical modelling language. The architecture commonly used to standardize a software engineering modelling language utilizes multiple levels despite the fact that the basic assumptions are only valid for a pair of levels. This has led several research groups to seek a means by which modelling languages can be created, and later standardized, without resorting to 'fixes' necessitated by the use of strict metamodelling and a multilevel hierarchy. Here, we describe a novel single-level approach based on 'everything is an object', which permits effective flattening of such a hierarchy, thus obviating all the paradoxical concerns in the literature over the last two decades. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.