Exploring the CDIF standards with HTML-rendered versions, intertwining dependencies via hyperlinks

Before devising specifications for creating an HTML-version of the EIA/CDIF-standards it seems to be necessary to analyze the rules which the authors of the original EIA/CDIF-standards have devised to document their semantic meta-models in order to possibly take advantage of their experiences. Such rules are mandatory as EIA/CDIF has been documenting the EIA/CDIF standards via the means of independently working editors using a word processor who had to work by the same rules in order to generate the standard texts in a systematic and comparable structure and layout.

The most important common structuring mechanism ist the EIA/CDIF meta-meta-model which mandates how EIA/CDIF compliant meta-models have to be defined. Comparing the information about the EIA/CDIF meta-models with the meta-meta-model one can extract at least the following set of rules for the reference-part of the documention:

• First, the defined concepts are presented in forms which should allow the reader to gain an overview about them:
  • a generalization hierarchy with the AttributableMetaObject "RootObject" as its root, and two branches, one with the MetaEntities starting with "RootEntity" and one with the fully qualified names of the MetaRelationships starting with "RootEntity.IsRelatedTo.RootEntity"

  • a listing of meta-entities together with the names of their meta-attributes, emphasizing whether they are mandatory and whether they come into play via inheritance along the generalization hierarchy

  • a listing of meta-relationships together with the names of their meta-attributes, emphasizing whether they are mandatory and whether they come into play via inheritance along the generalization hierarchy

• secondly, a division documenting the detailed definitions of the concepts, starting out with the detailed SubjectArea definition and thereafter with the alphabetically ordered instances of the meta-meta-entities:
  • AttributableMetaObject (optional for all subject areas but "Foundation")

  • MetaEntity

  • MetaRelationship

• thirdly, a division documenting the detailed definitions of those concepts, which need to get referenced in the respective subject area, and which are alphabetically ordered instances of the meta-meta-entities:
  • AttributableMetaObject (mandatory for all subject areas but "Foundation")

  • MetaEntity

  • MetaRelationship

• First, the detailed definition with all the values for the appropriate meta-meta-attributes is given, followed by

• a list of inherited meta-attributes is shown together with the supertype for which they are defined,

• an optional list of locally defined meta-attributes, which later are shown with their appropriate meta-meta-attribute values,

• for instances of the meta-meta-entity MetaEntity the following two lists are given:
  • a list of inherited meta-relationships and

  • an optional list of locally defined meta-relationships, i.e. meta-relationships the meta-entity participates in with its own name.

All the necessary information for building the above standards in a systematic and automatic way is already available in the form of the EIA/CDIF meta-meta-model. Thus, if one expoloits the meta-meta-model one should be able to automate the creation of the standards and thereby obsoleting the use of a cumbersome wordprocessor and typing by hand; on the other hand if one wants to intertwine the definitions one merely needs to take advantage of the very same meta-meta-relationships which one needs to employ anyway in creating e.g. the list of inherited meta-attributes or meta-relationships:

• Instances of meta-meta-type SubjectArea, AttributableMetaObject, MetaEntity, MetaRelationship and MetaAttribute are described exactly with the meta-meta-attributes of the appropriate meta-meta-entities,

• the generalization hierarchy can be created by starting out with the definition for "RootObject" and enumerating recursively its specializations. In order to do this the meta-meta-relationship "AttributableMetaObject.HasSubtype.AttributableMetaObject" needs to get used,

• by analyzing the meta-meta-relationship "MetaAttribute.IsLocalMetaAttributeOf.AttributableMetaObject" one can determine the local meta-attributes, processing this meta-meta-relationship together with "AttributableMetaObject.HasSubtype.AttributableMetaObject" allows one to arrive at the listings of inherited attributes,

• by analyzing the meta-meta-relationships "MetaRelationship.HasSource.MetaEntity" and "MetaRelationship.HasDestination.MetaEntity" one can determine the local meta-relationships meta-entities participate in, processing this meta-meta-relationship together with "AttributableMetaObject.HasSubtype.AttributableMetaObject" allows one to arrive at the listings of inherited attributes.

The presentation will talk in more detail about the structuring of the EIA/CDIF-standards, the hyperlinks needed and discusses additional information which is incorporated in the HTML-renderings (e.g. adding of visual hints beyond the standards and giving structural information in the overview part).

It is up to the audience to drive the talk by asking questions.
(E.g. there will be additional prepared foils demonstrating the HTML-renderings and the hyperlinks embedded within them or giving specifications for some of the necessary functions/methods w.r.t. creating and maintaining hyperlinks while producing the appropriate HTML-files, if the audience so wishes. It is planned to use a laptop for this part to demonstrate the substantial time savings and the dynamic way of exploring the EIA/CDIF standards in an extremely fast manner)

Rony G. Flatscher
Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien/Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration
Abt. f. Wirtschaftsinformatik/MIS Department
Wien/Vienna, Austria/Europe

Links

• EIA/CDIF, Homepage

• Fall '98: New Book on EIA/CDIF Meta-Modeling incorporating all standardized EIA/CDIF Meta-models as of 1998.

• OOPSLA, Homepage

• OOPSLA 98, Workshop #25: Model Engineering, Methods and Tools Integration with CDIF

• OOPSLA, Workshop Overview