Towards metamodelling-in-the-large: Interface-based composition for modular metamodel development

Abstract

Modelling language engineering approaches based on metamodelling provide powerful concepts to define metamodels, pivotal constructs for language definition.With increasing popularity of domainspecific, hybrid and evolving modelling languages, the necessity for efficient and flexible metamodelling becomes apparent. Modularisation and composition techniques can reduce effort and improve efficiency and flexibility in metamodel development. Existing metamodelling languages and standards providemeans formetamodel modularisation and composition, however based on pure white-box packages and inheritance-like composition operators. In this paper, we propose an approach based on interfaces and interface-based composition operators. Inspired by component-oriented concepts of programming languages, we introduce black-boxmetamodel fragments with explicit provided and required interfaces that can be combined to systematically and flexibly build new metamodels. We discuss the realisation of our approach as an extension to existing metamodelling language concepts and demonstrate its applicability by modularising the metamodel of the BPMS method, a hybrid BPMN-centred language for enterprise modelling.