Abstract
This expert voice paper presents a comprehensive rationale of multi-level modeling. It aims not only at a systematic assessment of its prospects, but also at encouraging applications of multi-level modeling in business information systems and at providing a motivation for future research. The assessment is developed from a comparison of multi-level modeling with object-oriented, general-purpose modeling languages (GPMLs) and domain-specific modeling languages (DSMLs). To foster a differentiated evaluation, we propose a multi-perspective framework that accounts, among others, for essential design conflicts, different types of users, as well as economic aspects. Besides the assessment of the additional abstraction offered by multi-level modeling, the evaluation also identifies specific drawbacks and remaining challenges. Based on the results of the comparative assessment, in order to foster the adoption and further development of multi-level modeling, we discuss the prospects of supplementing multi-level modeling languages with multi-level programming languages and suggest possible dissemination strategies customized for different groups of users. The paper concludes with an outline of future research.
Highlights
Introduced about 20 years ago [8], with ancestors that go back even further, cf. [56,63,91,95], multi-level modeling has not yet made it to the research mainstream, neither in software engineering nor in conceptual modeling
We show that multi-level modeling represents an outstanding, if not the most important contribution to conceptual modeling in the recent past
The additional abstraction it allows for enables relaxing essential design conflicts
Summary
Introduced about 20 years ago [8], with ancestors that go back even further, cf. [56,63,91,95], multi-level modeling has not yet made it to the research mainstream, neither in software engineering nor in conceptual modeling. It has been persistent, and there are signs of an increased awareness of multi-level modeling, albeit to a modest degree only. A recent Dagstuhl seminar [2] confirms the relevance and topicality of multi-level modeling. The small international community of dedicated researchers is still excited about the prospects of multi-level modeling
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