A Meta Modeling Technique

We propose a technique for bridging the gap between the user's and the implementor's points of view in designing software. This technique relies heavily on OO technology and on rule based programming. It borrows part of its inspiration from the AI subfield of Knowledge Acquisition. This technique is implemented as a system now called MÉTAGEN [Sahraoui94], written in Smalltalk-80. Several applications of MÉTAGEN have been used to modelize information systems in public administration, to validate conceptual models by simulation for insurance companies, and to specify a risk management system. We are now customizing MÉTAGEN in two directions : as a tool for implementing the INTERSEM project [Prud'homme92], which aims at building semantic interfaces for OO DBMS, and as a user support tool for the proper use of OO Application Frameworks [Johnson92]. The paper gives a summary of the technique, illustrated by a simple example, and offers a brief discussion of our approach. An extended version has been accepted for presentation at TOOLSEurope'95 [Revault&al.95].