A Metamodel for the Unified Modeling Language

Nowadays models, rather than code, become the key artifacts of software development. Consequently, this raises the level of requirements for modeling languages on which modeling practitioners should rely in their work. A minor inconsistency of a modeling language metamodel may cause major problems in the language applications; thus with the model driven systems development the solidness of modeling languages metamodels becomes particularly important. In its current state the UML metamodel leaves a significant area for improvement. We present an alternative metamodel that was inspired by the RM-ODP standard and that solves the problems of UML. RM-ODP was mentioned in UML specifications as a framework that has already influenced UML. Our metamodel was formalized, thus its resulting models can be simulated and checked for consistency. So, our proposed solution with constructive potential towards improvement of the UML metamodel, may have a significant practical impact on the UML specifications

Endurant Types in Ontology-Driven Conceptual Modeling: Towards OntoUML 2.0

For over a decade now, a community of researchers has contributed to the development of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) - aimed at providing foundations for all major conceptual modeling constructs. This ontology has led to the development of an Ontology-Driven Conceptual Modeling language dubbed OntoUML, reflecting the ontological micro-theories comprising UFO. Over the years, UFO and OntoUML have been successfully employed in a number of academic, industrial and governmental settings to create conceptual models in a variety of different domains. These experiences have pointed out to opportunities of improvement not only to the language itself but also to its underlying theory. In this paper, we take the first step in that direction by revising the theory of types in UFO in response to empirical evidence. The new version of this theory shows that many of the meta-types present in OntoUML (differentiating Kinds, Roles, Phases, Mixins, etc.) should be considered not as restricted to Substantial types but instead should be applied to model Endurant Types in general, including Relator types, Quality types and Mode types. We also contribute a formal characterization of this fragment of the theory, which is then used to advance a metamodel for OntoUML 2.0. Finally, we propose a computational support tool implementing this updated metamodel

A Modeling Approach based on UML/MARTE for GPU Architecture

Nowadays, the High Performance Computing is part of the context of embedded systems. Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are more and more used in acceleration of the most part of algorithms and applications. Over the past years, not many efforts have been done to describe abstractions of applications in relation to their target architectures. Thus, when developers need to associate applications and GPUs, for example, they find difficulty and prefer using API for these architectures. This paper presents a metamodel extension for MARTE profile and a model for GPU architectures. The main goal is to specify the task and data allocation in the memory hierarchy of these architectures. The results show that this approach will help to generate code for GPUs based on model transformations using Model Driven Engineering (MDE).Comment: Symposium en Architectures nouvelles de machines (SympA'14) (2011

A Language Description is More than a Metamodel

Within the context of (software) language engineering, language descriptions are considered first class citizens. One of the ways to describe languages is by means of a metamodel, which represents the abstract syntax of the language. Unfortunately, in this process many language engineers forget the fact that a language also needs a concrete syntax and a semantics. In this paper I argue that neither of these can be discarded from a language description. In a good language description the abstract syntax is the central element, which functions as pivot between concrete syntax and semantics. Furthermore, both concrete syntax and semantics should be described in a well-defined formalism