The Role of Metamodeling in Model-Driven Development

Model-Driven Development (MDD) is a model-centric software engineering approach which aims at improving the quality and lifespan of software artifacts by focusing on the design models instead of code. However, in many respects, MDD is still in its infancy and suffers from several shortcomings. In this paper, we analyze MDD's current deficiencies in detail and argue that potential for improvement lies in the domain-specific adaptation of MDD infrastructures by consequently applying metamodel-based approaches. An examination and comparison of stereotypes and class libraries as related "lightweight" techniques for domain-specific model extensions shows that a more sophisticated approach is needed. Therefore, we propose the concept of a three-level ontological metamodel hierarchy designed to support user-defined domain-specific metamodels. A rudimentary example hierarchy from the context of content management is used to illustrate how our solution helps to reach the goals of MDD