ENT: A Generic Meta-Model for the Description of Component-Based Applications

Current best practice in modeling component-based applications is the use of UML extended by a profile. This solution provides a general and common approach of application description and allows to capture some details based on the concrete component model. It has however disadvantages due to the limitations of UML itself, like little scalability or lack of inherent model semantics. In this paper we propose a solution to overcome these limitations, in the form of a meta-model developed directly for the description of components and component-based applications. Its unique aspect is the use of faceted classification to introduce additional semantics and structuring to the derived models. We describe the features and advantages of this meta-model and illustrate its aspects on a model example of a simple OSGi application. At the end of paper we also propose the usage of this meta-model in visualization of component-based applications.