Abstract We present a metamodel-based approach for specifying uml notations for domain-specific modeling languages. Traditionally, domain specific languages are either defined by uml profiles or using metamodels. We provide a generic integration of these two methods supporting arbitrary uml profiles and metamodels. Our approach provides a bidirectional mapping between the uml notation and the metamodel of the domain specific language. We use ocl constraints that are embedded into the metamodel, for describing the mapping between the uml notation and the metamodel. Moreover, we describe an implementation, as ArgoUML-plugin, for arbitrary SecureUML dialects.

Domain specific languages (DSLs) are of increasing importance for today’s software development processes. Their area of application ranges from process modeling over architecture description and system design to behavioral specification and simulation. There are numerous approaches for the definition and implementation of DSLs. Among others, the OMG offers UML profiles as a lightweight extension of a predefined multi-purpose language and MOF as a metamodeling language, which can be used to define DSLs from scratch. This contribution investigates various approaches to define DSLs, focusing on architectural description languages (ADLs) as an example. Besides the usage of UML profiles and the definition of a completely new language with MOF, the adaption of the UML based on a metamodel extension is also considered. As a consequence of the shortcomings depicted for the different approaches, we suggest to combine UML profiles and metamodeling in order to compensate their weaknesses and take advantage of their benefits.