I’ve had the chance to look over a draft version of the new MDA Foundation Model. This foundation model provides formal model for all basic concepts involved in a MDD/MDA approach to systems development. In particular, it defines the concepts of model, metamodel, transformation,… and the relationships between them.

This formal model is expected to be the basis for the revised version of the current MDA Guide now more than 6 years old.

The first thing I should say IS that I’m very happy with this initiative. It was time that all concepts used in MDA had a more “formal semantics” and “precise” definition.

The bad news is that, IMHO, this foundation model still needs a fair amount of work to be ready. Just to mention three issues, 1 – the model concept itself is not that clear (a UML class diagram and a UML Sequence diagram modeling the same system are one model or two? if two, how to represent the relationships between the two?), 2 – metamodels are simply defined as sets of metaelements (where metamodel is a subclass of the model class and metaelement a subclass of the element class), which is a too simplistic view of metamodels (i.e. a purely syntactic one, lacking of the semantic information allowing to correctly interpret the models instance of those metamodels) and 3 – Views can only contain a subset of elements of a single model (I think it would be useful to have views aggregating elements from several models).

Hopefully, the OMG will decide to release soon a (improved) first version of the draft so that all non-OMG members can give our opinion and help preparing the upcoming MDA 2.0. standard (until then, you can check some initial sketches of the foundation model here ).

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