The XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) is an
Object Management Group (OMG) standard for exchanging
metadata
Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including:
* Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...
information via
Extensible Markup Language (XML).
It can be used for any metadata whose metamodel can be expressed in
Meta-Object Facility (MOF).
The most common use of XMI is as an interchange format for
UML
The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a general-purpose, developmental modeling language in the field of software engineering that is intended to provide a standard way to visualize the design of a system.
The creation of UML was originally m ...
models, although it can also be used for serialization of models of other languages (metamodels).
Overview
In the
OMG vision of modeling, data is split into abstract models and concrete models. The abstract models represent the semantic information, whereas the concrete models represent visual diagrams. Abstract models are instances of arbitrary MOF-based modeling languages such as
UML
The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a general-purpose, developmental modeling language in the field of software engineering that is intended to provide a standard way to visualize the design of a system.
The creation of UML was originally m ...
or
SysML
The Systems Modeling Language (SysML) is a general-purpose modeling language for systems engineering applications. It supports the specification, analysis, design, verification and validation of a broad range of systems and systems-of-systems.
S ...
. For diagrams, the Diagram Interchange (DI, XMI
I standard is used. There are currently several incompatibilities between different modeling tool vendor implementations of XMI, even between interchange of abstract model data. The usage of Diagram Interchange is almost nonexistent. This means exchanging files between
UML
The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a general-purpose, developmental modeling language in the field of software engineering that is intended to provide a standard way to visualize the design of a system.
The creation of UML was originally m ...
modeling tools using XMI is rarely possible.
One purpose of XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) is to enable easy interchange of metadata between UML-based modeling tools and MOF-based metadata repositories in distributed heterogeneous environments. XMI is also commonly used as the medium by which models are passed from modeling tools to software generation tools as part of
model-driven engineering
Model-driven engineering (MDE) is a software development methodology that focuses on creating and exploiting domain models, which are conceptual models of all the topics related to a specific problem. Hence, it highlights and aims at abstract re ...
.
Examples of XMI, and lists of the XML tags that make up XMI-formatted files, are available in the version 2.5.1 specification document.
[Object Management Group]
XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) Specification
version 2.5.1, June 2015
Integration of industry standards
XMI integrates 4 industry standards:
*
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...
– Extensible Markup Language, a
W3C
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...
standard.
*
UML
The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a general-purpose, developmental modeling language in the field of software engineering that is intended to provide a standard way to visualize the design of a system.
The creation of UML was originally m ...
– Unified Modeling Language, an
OMG modeling standard.
*
MOF – Meta Object Facility, an
OMG language for specifying
metamodels.
* MOF – Mapping to XMI
The integration of these 4 standards into XMI allows tool developers of distributed systems to share object models and other metadata.
Several versions of XMI have been created: 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 2.0, 2.1, 2.1.1, 2.4, 2.4.1, 2.4.2. and 2 5.1. The 2.x versions are radically different from the 1.x series.
The Diagram Definition OMG project is another alternative for metadata interchange, which can also express the layout and graphical representation.
XMI is an international standard:
;XMI 2.4.2
:
ISO
ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization.
ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance
* Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007
* Iso ...
/
IEC
The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC; in French: ''Commission électrotechnique internationale'') is an international standards organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronic and r ...
19509:2014 Information technology — XML Metadata Interchange (XMI)
;XMI 2.0
:
ISO
ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization.
ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance
* Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007
* Iso ...
/
IEC
The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC; in French: ''Commission électrotechnique internationale'') is an international standards organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronic and r ...
19503:2005 Information technology — XML Metadata Interchange (XMI)
See also
*
Common Warehouse Metamodel
*
Web Ontology Language
The Web Ontology Language (OWL) is a family of knowledge representation languages for authoring ontologies. Ontologies are a formal way to describe taxonomies and classification networks, essentially defining the structure of knowledge for variou ...
*
Generic Modeling Environment
Generic Modeling Environment (GME) is a model-integrated program synthesis tool for creating domain-specific models of large-scale systems. GME allows users to define new modeling languages using UML-based metamodels. GME was developed by the In ...
(GME)
*
Eclipse Modeling Framework
Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) is an Eclipse-based modeling framework and code generation facility for building tools and other applications based on a structured data model.
From a model specification described in XML Metadata Interchange ...
(EMF)
*
Domain Specific Language
A domain-specific language (DSL) is a computer language specialized to a particular application domain. This is in contrast to a general-purpose language (GPL), which is broadly applicable across domains. There are a wide variety of DSLs, ranging ...
(DSL)
*
Domain-specific modelling (DSM)
*
Meta-modeling
A metamodel or surrogate model is a model of a model, and metamodeling is the process of generating such metamodels. Thus metamodeling or meta-modeling is the analysis, construction and development of the frames, rules, constraints, models and ...
*
Meta-Object Facility
The Meta-Object Facility (MOF) is an Object Management Group (OMG) standard for model-driven engineering. Its purpose is to provide a type system for entities in the CORBA architecture and a set of interfaces through which those types can be creat ...
(MOF)
References
External links
OMG XMI Specification
{{ISO standards
XML-based standards
Unified Modeling Language
Systems Modeling Language
ISO standards