Service-Oriented Integration of Metamodels' Behavioural Semantics

Abstract

Metamodel composition is a central operation in model-driven engineering approaches. Composition of metamodels is not trivial. The essence of the problem is that metamodels are not defined as reusable artefacts. Moreover, most composition mechanisms focus on the structural aspects of metamodels without considering how metamodels may be composed semantically. Hence, models of different metamodels can not exchange data directly during execution at runtime. In this paper we investigate a new approach for integrating metamodels and their models by considering metamodels as reusable services at a conceptual level. In particular, the behavioural semantics of metamodels can be coupled in a loosely manner, without entanglement of semantically different concepts. This allows creating complex metamodel architectures where separation of concerns is high. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.