Unification or Integration? The Challenge of Semantics in Heterogeneous Modeling Languages

Gabor Karsai
2014 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems  
Model-driven software development and systems engineering rely on modeling languages that provide ecient, domain-specic abstractions for design, analysis, and implementation. Models are essential for communicating ideas across the engineering team, but also key to the analysis of the system. No single model or modeling language can cover all aspects of a system, and even for particular aspects multiple modeling languages are used in the same system. Thus engineers face the dilemma of either
more » ... ng a unifying semantics for all models, or nding a solution to the model integration problem. The talk will elaborate these problems, and show two, potential solutions: one using a model integration language (for the engineering design domain) and another one using explicit and executable semantics (for the domain of distributed reactive controllers). The problem Engineered systems are increasingly built using model-driven techniques, where models are used in all phases of the system's lifecycle, from concept development to product to operation. Models are built for everything: from the smallest part to the entire system, and models are used for all sorts engineering activities: from design to analysis and verication, to implementation and manufacturing. Engineering models are often based on domain-specic abstractions of reality; for example a nite-element model represents a 3D shape and an engineering assembly drawing represents how those shapes need to be joined together by some manufacturing steps to form an assembly. While there is a multitude of domain-specic models used in the design of a complex system, somehow these models have to 't together' because (1) they are describing the same, single system, and (2) they need to be combined to allow cross-domain, system-level analysis of the design. Models created in (domain-specic) isolation are necessary and very useful, but insucient when the larger system is considered -in the larger systems subsystems and their components interact, and these interactions have to be expressed as well.
dblp:conf/models/Karsai14 fatcat:r4boblgw5vghrd4blqtsrrzdmi