Explicit versus implicit models: What are good languages for modeling?

Software & Systems Modeling, vol. 21, pp. 839–841

Abstract

Although modeling is used in almost all science and engineering disciplines, the explicit definition of modeling languages is an invention of modern computing technology.It was necessary to define modeling languages precisely so that computers could process the models described in the languages, as a way to support various analysis and synthesis needs (e.g., model analysis and code generation).However, these were not the first languages that were defined precisely.Natural languages, for example English in the Oxford dictionary and German in the Duden, received a rather formal definition prior to digital automation with computers.The ideas of grammars and related lexicographic definitions were transferred from the natural language context to the first computer languages, namely programming languages and specification languages, where it received much more precision.And for diagrammatic modeling languages, the concept of a meta-model was popularized, often as a variant of a class diagram.The precise definition of modeling languages allows us to make models explicit.The advantages of precise modeling languages are well-known, namely (E1) support for syntactically concise descriptions, (E2) attachment of precise semantics, (E3) a human-readable representation that provides a language summary, (E4) models defined by a language can be processed by computers to help identify inconsistencies, incompleteness, and other issues, and also (E5) provide the foundation for high-level analysis techniques as promoted in various forms by the formal methods community.Finally of course, other benefits also include constructive use, including (E6) automatically deriving code, tests, and related artifacts from the models, and (E7) the ability to interpret a model.

Authors 2

1. Jeff Gray

   University of Alabama

   Affiliation as printed

   University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA

2. Bernhard Rumpe⋆ corresponding Aachen

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany