The Tao of Modeling Spaces

Abstract

The paper introduces modeling spaces in order to help software practitioner to understand modeling. Usually software engineers often think of a specific kind of models - UML models, but there are many open questions such as: Should we assume that the code we write is a model or not; What are models and metamodels, and why do we need them; What does it mean to transform a model into a programming language. Unlike current research efforts that answer to those questions in rather partial ways, we define a formal encompassing framework (i.e. Modeling spaces) for studying many modeling problems in a more comprehensive way. We illustrate the benefits of that framework for explaining present dilemmas practitioners have regarding models, metamodels, and model transformations.