Ontological metamodeling with explicit instantiation

Abstract

Model Driven Engineering (MDE) is a promising paradigm for software development. It raises the level of abstraction in software development by treating models as primary artifacts. The definition of a metamodel is a recurring task in MDE and requires sound and formal support. The lack of such support causes deficiencies such as conceptual anomalies in the modeling languages. From philosophical point of view metamodels can be seen as metaconceptualizations. Metalanguages have to provide constructs for building ontological theories as a base for modeling languages. This paper describes a new metalanguage derived from the study of Formal Ontology. This metalanguage raises the level of abstraction of metamodels from pure abstract syntax to semantics descriptions based on ontologies. Thus, the language developers can make conscious choices for their modeling concepts and can explicitly define important relations such as instantiation and generalization. With this metalanguage, we aim at a precise conceptual and formal foundation for metamodeling. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.