Metamodelling for Software Engineering

2.3 CATEGORIZATION ISSUES

A whole set of modelling issues is poorly handled by conventional modelling languages but is crucial for the modelling of methodologies and endeavours: representing categories of things. We have shown that the modelling language given by a metamodel not only must be able to express the kinds of work products, work units and producers that appear in methodologies, but also the work products, work units and producers that appear in endeavours. In consequence, a metamodel was defined as a domain-specific language oriented towards the representation of software development methodologies and endeavours. As a result, a metamodel that represents both methodologies and endeavours will contain concepts such as work product and work product kind; work unit and work unit kind; producer and producer kind. On the one hand, it is evident that the two concepts in each of these pairs are closely related; on the other hand, most people would recognize that these are distinct concepts. What is the different between a work product and a work product kind? Can we point to a work product and then to a work product kind? Can we find definitions for these concepts? Can we establish how they are related to each other? The correct representation of these pairs of concepts, as well as the appropriate interconnection of the elements in the pair, is crucial to implementing categorization in the metamodel.

The next sections look at this problem using the example of a veterinary management ...