Adex - A meta modeling framework for repository-centric systems building
Subramanyam Reddy, Janak Mulani, Arun Bahulkar · 2000
Organizations are increasingly recognizing the need for building and maintaining their information systems around a central repository, which is essentially an information system of information systems. Models are the artifacts with which information systems are described. A repository should therefore provide a modeling framework that is flexible enough to support models of different methodologies, different implementation and deployment platforms, and enterprise specific domain knowledge, at various levels of granularity. In addition it should be possible to use the models for automation of code generation and coordination of various processes of system building and maintenance. Since information systems evolve over time and also since systems typically have many variants, it is essential that a repository should provide good versioning and configuration management facilities. Adex is a modeling tool, with a meta modeling framework, which fulfils the above mentioned requirements. The meta models that come as part of standard modeling tools are often inadequate for capturing all the domain specific abstractions of an enterprise’s data and processes. Adex’s ' meta modeling' framework enables natural categorization of abstractions through creation and customization of enterprise specific meta models, diagramming notations, and methodologies. Unlike most standard modeling tools, Adex provides constructs for componentization and versioning of models. More importantly, Adex has primitives for defining notions of compatibility of components and completeness of an aggregate of components. Adex is a customizable, multi-user, secure and open modeling environment. It has been successfully used in a wide range of large (> 100 persons) and small (< 10 persons) projects. Its ‘meta modeling’ framework has been used to create meta models for component-based information system modeling and generation tools, program analysis and reverse engineering tools, and performance modeling and simulation tools.