The development of domain-specific modelling languages has experienced a growing interest in the past years in industry and academia. This evolution can be attributed to the need to design, describe, and analyze complex information systems coherently and consistently using a specific vocabulary and terminology from different backgrounds: model artifacts are not observed isolated anymore for a specific purpose, but need to be understood in the context of an organization ecosystem. In such an environment, domain specificity enables the modelers to express focused models using tailored domain concepts that are commonly understood by human stakeholders. The semantic transformation enables machine processing to generate model value. To facilitate such a setting, platform support for conceptual modelling is required that adapts iteratively to changing circumstances and domain needs.

This tutorial introduces the open-source metamodeling platform ADOxx as an experimentation environment for researchers and practitioners to realize individual meta-models and model processing functionalities for domain-specific conceptual modelling methods as modelling tools. Specific emphasis is given to the practical nature of the tutorial: participants are encouraged to realize their modelling tools in a hands-on setting and experiment with the capabilities of ADOxx to implement meta-models and model processing functionalities from scratch, specialize existing abstract fragments or compose and integrate available outcomes provided by the ADOxx.org community. The prototypes realized as part of the tutorial are available after that for further refinement, assessment, and evaluation. A community for a specific domain forms around common but specific artifacts found in that domain. For the domain of conceptual modelling, the ADOxx meta-modelling environment is such an artifact, having formed a community through projects, realized tools, and knowledge exchange.
As a practical example for the tutorial, a case from the project is utilized that demonstrates how metamodeling is applied to adapt an existing ADOxx-based tool to novel requirements related to decision support systems.

Target Audience

The tutorial targets students, researchers, and practitioners in meta-modelling, and conceptual modelling who have a research interest in this field. The ADOxx platform addresses all researchers interested in creating meta-models, users in designing modelling methods, developers in being able to deploy full-fledged modelling tools, and students who want to learn and understand that “model value” means more than just drawing diagrams.

Acknowledgment: This work has been supported by the FAIRWork Project and has been funded within the European Commission’s Horizon Europe Programme under contract number 101049499. This content presented expresses the opinions of the presenters and not necessarily those of the European Commission. The European Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained in this tutorial.