Model Driven Engineering

• All forms of engineering rely on models as essential to understanding complex real-world systems.
• The basic ideas of models, modeling, and model transformation are the basis for a set of software development approaches that are known as model-driven development (MDD).
• OMG champions a style of MDD called Model-Driven Architecture (MDA). It is based on a set of emerging standards for how to define a set of models, notations, and transformation rules.
• The MDA approach provides an open, vendor-neutral basis for system interoperability via OMG’s established modeling standards: Unified Modeling Language (UML), Meta-Object Facility (MOF), and Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM). Platformindependent descriptions of enterprise solutions can be built using these modeling standards.
• By thinking of software and system development as a set of model refinements, the transformations between models become first-class elements of the development process.
• The ability to analyze, automate, and transform models requires a clear, unambiguous way to describe the semantics of the models. Hence, the models intrinsic to a modeling approach must themselves be described in a model, which we call a metamodel.
• OMG defined a set of metamodeling levels, and defined a standard language for expressing metamodels, the Meta-Object Facility (MOF). A metamodel uses MOF to formally define the abstract

syntax of a set of modeling constructs.

Epsilon

• Epsilon is a component of Eclipse that provides infrastructure for implementing uniform and interoperable model management languages.
• It can be used to manage models of diverse metamodels and technologies.