Tutorial: Using UFO as a Reference Ontology in the (Re-)Design of Enterprise Modelling Languages

Author(s):  
Joao Paulo Almeida
Author(s):  
Patrick Delfmann ◽  
Hanns-Alexander Dietrich ◽  
Matthias Steinhorst ◽  
Jörg Becker

Enterprise modelling and evaluating subsequently created models is manifold. Enterprise modelling means capturing an organization's business processes, its organizational structure, its corporate strategy, or its supporting information systems in graphical conceptual models. Evaluating these models means assuring their structural and semantic quality as well as their user group adequacy. Enterprise modelling and model evaluation requires comprehensive tool support. Recently, a number of modelling tools have been proposed each addressing particular aspects of enterprise modelling or model evaluation. For example, meta-modelling tools allow for defining new and altering existing modelling languages. Meta-modelling tools are thus well suited for enterprise modelling as this requires a large number of different modelling languages that may need to be adapted to the particular enterprise. In contrast, some modelling tools provide mechanisms to structurally or semantically evaluate models of a predefined language. However, comprehensive tool support for enterprise modelling and model evaluation is missing up to now. With this paper, the authors aim at closing this research gap by proposing a tool combining meta-modelling capabilities with features to structurally and semantically evaluate models as well as to manage model perspectives. The tool thus covers the entire model lifecycle from defining a problem-suitable modelling language, creating models, configuring them for different user groups, and evaluating them in terms of structure and semantics.


Author(s):  
Juan de Lara ◽  
Esther Guerra

AbstractModelling is an essential activity in software engineering. It typically involves two meta-levels: one includes meta-models that describe modelling languages, and the other contains models built by instantiating those meta-models. Multi-level modelling generalizes this approach by allowing models to span an arbitrary number of meta-levels. A scenario that profits from multi-level modelling is the definition of language families that can be specialized (e.g., for different domains) by successive refinements at subsequent meta-levels, hence promoting language reuse. This enables an open set of variability options given by all possible specializations of the language family. However, multi-level modelling lacks the ability to express closed variability regarding the availability of language primitives or the possibility to opt between alternative primitive realizations. This limits the reuse opportunities of a language family. To improve this situation, we propose a novel combination of product lines with multi-level modelling to cover both open and closed variability. Our proposal is backed by a formal theory that guarantees correctness, enables top-down and bottom-up language variability design, and is implemented atop the MetaDepth multi-level modelling tool.


Author(s):  
Paulo Sérgio Santos Júnior ◽  
Monalessa Perini Barcellos ◽  
Ricardo de Almeida Falbo ◽  
João Paulo A. Almeida

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