Meta-Modelling

Keywords:

Affiliation: EU-Project

As the paradigm of enterprise modelling ori­ginally envisioned, a hybridization of model­ling approaches is needed in order to cover the multiple facets of a business view, its context and requirements for different types of resour­ces - including IT services and infrastructure. The “mo­delling method framework” [Karagiannis/Kühn, 2002] establishes key building blocks to enable the required hybrid modelling and to increase the value of models beyond their traditional functions. As the importance of Next Generation Enterprise Modelling in the age of the Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, Industrial 3-D printing etc. increases, new modelling capabilities, semantically enriched design concepts and adapted operational functionality must satisfy evolving needs, in order to successfully manage not only the transformation in the digital enterprise stage, but also the adaptation and ex­tension of existing services. In this context, the founda­tions of a „conceptual-model“-awareness approach for next generation enterprise information systems will be presented. This novel approach makes use of semantic networks to extend model-awareness towards arbitra­ry types of models that are developed for specialized communities aiming for domain-specificity in their mo­delling language, therefore favoring productivity at the expense of reusability across domains. Two categories of models are employed in this context: (1) Models of Concepts and (2) Models that use Concepts. The hereby introduced life cycle of Agile Modeling Method Engi­neering - AMME [PCI2015] aims to apply the principle of agility established in Software Engineering to the practice of Modelling Method Engineering. The main assumption is that a modelling method may evolve iteratively based on changing modelling requirements and feedback loops. Within the context of AMME, a full methodological approach is established by the OMiLAB (http://www.omilab.org), with a life cycle encompas­sing five phases: (1) create, (2) design, (3) formalize, (4), develop and (5) deploy/validate. The approach is sup­ported, in its fast prototyping stage, by the metamode­ling domain-specific language MM-DSL and the meta-modelling platform ADOxx (http://www.adoxx.org).

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