Deriving a textual notation from a metamodel: an experience on bridging Modelware and Grammarware

In this paper, we show how the OMG’s metamodelling approach to domain-specific language definition can be exploited to infer human-usable textual notations (concrete syntaxes) from the conceptualization provided by metamodels (abstract syntaxes). We give general rules to derive a context-free EBNF (Extended Backus-Naur Form) grammar from a MOF-compliant metamodel, and we show how to instruct a parser generator by these rules for generating a compiler which is able to parse the grammar and to transfer information about models into a MOF-based instance repository. The approach is exemplified for the Abstract State Machines Metamodel (AsmM), a metamodel for the Abstract State Machine (ASM) formal method, by illustrating the derivation of a textual notation to write ASM specifications conforming to the AsmM, and the process to input ASM models into a MOF repository.