Schema Evolution publication categorizer

The goal of Model Management is the development of new technologies
and mechanisms to support the integration, evolution and matching of
models. Such tasks are to be performed by means of a set of model
management operators which work on models and their elements, without
being restricted to a particular metamodel (e.g. the relational or
UML metamodel). We propose that generic model management should
employ a generic metamodel (GMM) which serves as an abstraction of
the features of particular metamodels while preserving the semantics
of its different elements. A naive generalization of the elements of
concrete metamodels in generic metaclasses would loose some of the
specific features of the metamodels, or yield a prohibitive number of
metaclasses in the GMM. To avoid these problems, we propose the
Generic Role Based Metamodel GeRoMe in which each model element is
decorated with a set of role objects that represent specific
properties of the model element. Roles may be added to or removed
from elements at any time, which enables a very flexible and dynamic
yet accurate definition of models. Roles constitute to operators
different views on the same model element. Thus, operators
concentrate on features which affect their functionality but may
remain agnostic about other features. Consequently, these operators
can use polymorphism and have to be implemented only once using
GeRoMe, and not for each specific metamodel. We verified our results
by implementing GeRoMe and a selection of model management operators
using our metadata system ConceptBase.