Next Generation (Meta)Modeling: Web- and Cloud-based Collaborative Tool Infrastructure

TLDR

The paper introduces WebGME, a web‑ and cloud‑based collaborative tool for designing domain‑specific modeling languages and domain models, and outlines its architecture and key design decisions. WebGME extends GME’s prototypical inheritance to fuse metamodeling with modeling, adds cross‑cutting concern modeling, and is built on a web architecture that prioritizes scalability, extensibility, and version control while overcoming browser‑based constraints. These features make WebGME particularly effective for multi‑paradigm modeling.

Abstract

The paper presents WebGME, a novel, web- and cloud-based, collaborative, scalable (meta)modeling tool that supports the design of Domain Specific Modeling Languages (DSML) and the creation of cor- responding domain models. The unique prototypical inheritance, origi- nally introduced by GME, is extended in WebGME to fuse metamodel- ing with modeling. The tool also introduces novel ways to model cross- cutting concerns. These concepts are especially useful for multi-paradigm modeling. The main design drivers for WebGME have been scalability, extensibility and version control. The web-based architecture and the constraints the browser-based environment introduces provided signif- icant challenges that WebGME has overcome with balanced trade-os. The paper describes the architecture of WebGME, argues why the major design decisions were taken and presents the novel features of the tool.