Meta-level Independent Modelling

The popularity of the UML and the recent focus on its extension mechanisms has raised the general awareness of the value and importance of metamodelling. However, the effectiveness of metamodelling with the UML is being hindered by the lack of suitable notational support. In particular the stereotype mechanism is not consistently applied to the UML’s four-layer meta-architecture. The result is that different notations are used for the same concept at different meta-levels. In this paper we explain the motivation for a uniform, level-independent notation that supports the same concept in the same way regardless of its location in the meta-architecture, and then go on to suggest some of the principles upon which such a notation could be based.