Re: [Orocos-users] [ANN] DNG - beyond deployment scripts

On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 06:50:58PM +0100, Herman Bruyninckx wrote:
> >>That was clarified a little bit later on in my message: what are really the
> >>concepts we have to capture, what are their relationships, and how are they
> >>constrained?
> >
> >In a hope to clarify even further: these are exactly the components of the
> >'abstract syntax' of a domain-specific modelling language, as defined in [1].
> 
> Indeed. I consider both (DSL and metamodel) to coincide, whenever possible.
> 
> >This paper provides a few other interesting definitions, which maybe we could
> >adopt on this mailing list...
> 
> Which ones exactly are you thinking of?

Please excuse me for delayed reply. Definitions that I like in this paper are:
- model: a formal structure representing selected aspects of the engineering
  artifact and its environment (page 2).
- modeling language: a five-tuple of concrete syntax, abstract syntax, semantic
  domain, and semantic and syntactic mappings (page 4).

What I do not like are the explanations of "metamodel" as:
- "formal model of domain-specific modeling language" (page 1)
- "concrete, formal specifications of DSML" (page 4).

This suggests that model=specification (I do not agree). Moreover, they
describe fig. 3 as "metamodel" -- this is clearly wrong, because there is only
an abstract syntax in that figure, i.e. concepts, relationships and integrity
constraints.

It seems that even experts mix two different meanings of the term "metamodel":
1. modelling language (including syntax, semantics and notation)
2. abstract syntax of a DSML (formalized more as a graph than as a tree).

> Your suggestion is very valid, but then we are now focusing on the
> metametamodel discussion first :-)
> >
> >[1] G. Karsai, J. Sztipanovits, A. Ledeczi, and T. Bapty. Model-integrated
> >development of embedded software. Proceedings of the IEEE, 91(1):145–164, 2003.
> 
> Thanks for this reference! I am now taking a look at all articles in the
> special issue that this article appeared in.

Thank you for pointing to other gems hidden inside this issue!

> 
> >Piotr Trojanek
> 
> Herman

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Piotr Trojanek
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