Towards a Precise Definition of the OMG/MDA Framework

We are presently witnessing an important paradigm shift occurring in the area of information system construction, namely from object and component technology to model technology. The object technology revolution has allowed the replacement of the more than twenty-years old step-wise procedural decomposition paradigm by the more fashionable object composition paradigm. Surprisingly this evolution seems itself to have triggered today another even more radical change, towards model transformation. As a concrete trace of this, the Object Management Group is rapidly moving from its previous Object Management Architecture vision to the newest Model-Driven Architecture. This paper presents an abstract investigation into the interpretation of this evolution. In order to stay as language independent as possible, we have decided to use the neutral formalism of Sowa’s conceptual graphs to describe the various situations that characterize this organization. This will allow us to identify some potential problems in the proposed modeling framework and to suggest some possible solutions.