Orthogonal Meta-Modeling

This article introduces meta-modeling hierarchies additional to the conventional meta-modeling hierarchy in a model-driven architecture. Additional hierarchies are introduced orthogonal to the conventional meta-modeling hierarchy for an appropriate correlation of information on combined hierarchies. In particular, orthogonal meta-modeling enables the grouping of models on the same conventional meta-modeling layer based on additional semantic dependencies. For the enhancement of conventional meta-modeling this paper discusses the creation of orthogonal meta-modeling hierarchies, the specification of semantic dependencies in meta-modeling hierarchies, semantic instances as well as the inheritance of semantic dependencies in meta-modeling hierarchies in general. Furthermore, the paper outlines the impact of orthogonal semantic meta-modeling on automated model transformation.