Metamodeling and method engineering with ConceptBase

This chapter provides a practical guide on how to use the meta datarepository ConceptBase to design information modeling methods by using meta-modeling. After motivating the abstraction principles behind meta-modeling, thelanguage Telos as realized in ConceptBase is presented. First, a standard factualrepresentation of statements at any IRDS abstraction level is defined. Then, thefoundation of Telos as a logical theory is elaborated yielding simple fixpointsemantics. The principles for object naming, instantiation, attribution, andspecialization are reflected by roughly 30 logical axioms. After the languageaxiomatization, user-defined rules, constraints and queries are introduced. The firstpart is concluded by a description of active rules that allows the specification ofreactions of ConceptBase to external events. The second part applies the languagefeatures of the first part to a full-fledged information modeling method: The Yourdanmethod for Modern Structured Analysis. The notations of the Yourdan method aredesigned along the IRDS framework. Intra-notational and inter-notational constraintsare mapped to queries. The development life cycle is encoded as a software processmodel closely related to the modeling notations. Finally, aspects managing themodeling activities are addressed by metric definitions