Meaningful modeling: what's the semantics of "semantics"?

Abstract

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a complex collection of mostly diagrammatic notations for software modeling, and its standardization has prompted an animated discussion about UML's semantics and how to represent it. We have thus set out to clarify some of the notions involved in defining modeling languages, with an eye toward the particular difficulties arising in defining UML. We are primarily interested in distinguishing a language's notation, or syntax, from its meaning, or semantics, as well as recognizing the differences between variants of syntax and semantics in their nature, purpose, style, and use.