Instance-level modelling and simulation revisited

Abstract

Instance-level modelling is a sort of conceptual modelling that deals with concrete objects instead of general classes and types. Instance-level modelling approach offers a rather innovative way for communication with domain experts extremely useful for them, as they can see their real data in the context of the given model. Various approaches were presented in the paper “Instance-Level modelling and Simulation Using Lambda-Calculus and Object-Oriented Environments” at EOMAS 2011. The present paper is a sequel and it presents additional approaches we find useful in practice: Fact-oriented modelling, OntoUML in combination with OCL and the Alloy and Eclipse-based framework Dresden-OCL. We present key features of the various approaches and demonstrate them on a running example, we follow up with a discussion comparing these approaches. Notice that OntoUML combined with the Alloy is an original research achievement built on the research of OntoUML.