元建模技术研究进展

随着UML(unified modeling language)与MDA(model driven architecture)的兴起和流行,模型已经成为软件开发的核心制品,而模型重要性的提升使得建模语言以及定义建模语言的元模型逐渐成为软件开发中的一个核心要素.软件开发往往涉及多个领域,而不同的领域往往需要不同的建模语言及其建模工具.但是,手工地为不同的建模语言开发建模工具代价高昂.元建模技术是解决这个问题的方法之一,通过元建模,可以根据领域需要定制合适的元模型以定义领域建模语言,进而自动生成支持该建模语言的建模工具.大量的工程实践表明,与领域建模以及MDA相结合,元建模可以大幅度地提高软件开发效率,基于元建模的MDA比基于通用建模语言的MDA更具潜力.在最近的几年中,元建模及其相关技术发展迅猛,不但在技术上取得了长足的进步,而且在产业界也开始出现大规模的商业应用.总结了元建模的现有研究成果,分析和比较了现有元建模工具,探讨了元建模的可能发展方向.对元建模中存在的问题进行分析,并指出了可能的解决途径.

Progress of Research on Metamodeling

With the popularity of UML(unified modeling language)and MDA(model driven architecture),models are becoming the core artifacts of software development and maintenance.As a result,modeling languages and meta-models which are used to define modeling languages,become more and more important.Software development may cover quite a few domains,and different domains may require different modeling languages and their supporting modeling tools.But it is very expensive to develop modeling tools manually for every domain. Metamodeling is one of the technologies to facilitate the design of domain modeling languages and the development of modeling tools.In the approach of metamodeling,people design domain modeling languages according to domain request by metamodeling.And then,metamodeling tools automatically generate modeling tools,which support the designed domain modeling languages.As shown by experimental results,metamodeling,combined with MDA,can increase productivity of software development.This paper makes a survey of the current research on metamodeling,compare metamodeling tools,and discuss further directions of metamodeling and their supporting tools.