Metamodelling for Software Engineering

7.1 CREATING A POWERTYPE-BASED METHODOLOGY FROM ITS METAMODEL

The creation of a methodology from a metamodel requires the instantiation of each of the meta-elements into the elements that compose the methodology. Figure 7.3 depicts a high-level view of the parts of such a metamodel and Figure 7.4 shows a set of conformant Method domain elements. These latter elements will be used to construct our hypothetical methodology. With a method-engineering approach, each metaclass can be considered independently, individual fragments can be instantiated from the metaclass and then the methodology can be constructed from these fragments by an appropriate configuration approach, e.g. [7; 13; 14], or tool, e.g. [4].

In Figure 7.3, powertype patterns are shown as separate classes for the powertype and the partitioned type, since different relationships must be shown for each one. The Partitions relationship between MethodologyElement and EndeavourElement is shown, but similar relationships have been omitted for readability. User attributes and associations can be used to describe template methodology elements.

Figure 7.3: High-level view of a portion of the metamodel

Figure 7.4: Elements for our methodology conformant to the metamodel in Figure 7.3

In Figure 7.4, for the definition phase kind, ...