ECOOP / Tutorial 21 (cancelled)

Understanding Metamodeling

Topic	Clean definition of metamodeling as a technique for supporting the MDA
Goal	Improve skills to use existing UML extension mechanisms. Contrasting modeling and metamodeling as the right choices for particular purposes. Gain knowledge as to how a sound MDA infrastructure can be constructed.
Style	presentation + discussions

Abstract

Metamodeling not only directly underpins the specification of the UML and its associated profile mechanism, but is also the foundation for making the OMG’s new MDA vision come true. This tutorial starts by motivating metamodeling as an advanced way of creating software and then goes on to explore its fundamental principles. In particular, important new metamodeling concepts such as the distinction between logical and physical instance-of relationships, the unification of class and object facets and deep instantiation are introduced. A metamodeling framework suitable for MDA is constructed step-by-step and then used to explain and critique the OMG’s various metamodeling technologies. This information furnishes UML developers with the heuristics they need to more effectively utilize OMG metamodeling technology and to know when metamodeling concepts are suitable and when they are not. The tutorial ends with some methodological advice on how to model in the presence of more than two modeling levels (objects & classes).

Presenter Profile

Colin Atkinson

Colin Atkinson is a Professor at the University of Mannheim. Prior to that he was a Professor at the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany, and a Project Leader/Consultant at the affiliated Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE). His interests are centered on object and component technology and their use in the systematic development of software systems. He received a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in computer science from Imperial College, London, in 1990 and 1985 respectively, and received his B.Sc. in Mathematical Physics from the University of Nottingham in 1983

Thomas Kühne

Thomas Kühne is a Juniorprofessor at the Darmstadt University of Technology. Prior to that he was an Acting Professor at the University of Mannheim and before that a researcher at the University of Kaiserslautern and a Lecturer at Staffordshire University (UK). His interests are centered on object technology, programming language design and metamodeling. He received a Ph.D. and M.Sc. from the Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany in 1998 and 1992 respectively.

Details

Presenter(s)	Colin Atkinson, (University of Mannheim) Thomas Kühne, (Technische Universität Darmstadt)
Date Duration	Tuesday, 22, pm half day
Level	advanced
Targeted Audience	Anyone who aims to better understand the UML in order to use it more effectively as a family of languages. Also anyone interested in MDA supporting technology should attend this tutorial.