Using Aspect-orientation Techniques to Improve Reuse of Metamodels

Metamodelling is an activity that attracts attention of the research community dealing with the Model- Driven Development (MDD). To be reusable in different MDD approaches a metamodel should be unaware of being extended by another metamodel. This property of metamodel is called obliviousness. This paper shows that current techniques implementing metamodels do not maintain obliviousness when some elements of the extended metamodel and the elements of the original model have association relations. Three different approaches to reuse of metamodels are analyzed. One of the approaches uses traditional object-oriented techniques. Two other approaches use aspect-oriented techniques. The paper shows that the third approach, which considers relationships as first-class citizens at the implementation level by using relationship aspects, guarantees obliviousness of metamodels.Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología TIC 2003-369

A Model Driven Approach to Model Transformations

The OMG's Model Driven Architecture (MDA) initiative has been the focus of much attention in both academia and industry, due to its promise of more rapid and consistent software development through the increased use of models. In order for MDA to reach its full potential, the ability to manipulate and transform models { most obviously from the Platform Independent Model (PIM) to the Platform Specific Models (PSM) { is vital. Recognizing this need, the OMG issued a Request For Proposals (RFP) largely concerned with finding a suitable mechanism for trans- forming models. This paper outlines the relevant background material, summarizes the approach taken by the QVT-Partners (to whom the authors belong), presents a non-trivial example using the QVT-Partners approach, and finally sketches out what the future holds for model transformations

A metamodel for package extension with renaming.

Package extension and template mechanisms were originally proposed as part of the Catalysis method. It has since been suggested that they can be used to capture patterns and for aspect-oriented modelling and metamodelling. This paper provides a rigorous metamodel definition of the package extension mechanism. It turns out that the definition is more subtle than one might at first think, and some of the subtleties are exposed in the paper. The paper concludes with an overview of how the core definition may be expanded to include templates and to deal with a richer base language. Tool implementation is also discussed

A Metamodel for Package Extension with Renaming

Package extension and template mechanisms were originally proposed as part of the Catalysis method. It has since been suggested that they can be used to capture patterns and for aspect-oriented modelling and metamodelling. This paper provides a rigorous metamodel definition of the package extension mechanism. It turns out that the definition is more subtle than one might at first think, and some of the subtleties are exposed in the paper. The paper concludes with an overview of how the core definition may be expanded to include templates and to deal with a richer base language. Tool implementation is also discussed