Towards an understanding of model executability

Processes are a major concern of information system. They need thusto be defined as precisely as any other artefact of the system.Meta-modeling techniques have proved their relevance for addressingsuch issues. However, a process meta-model may not be restricted tothe definition of a set of concepts, relations and assertions. Asthe purpose of a process is to be executed, the underlyingexecution rules have also to be made explicit. In this paper weattempt to identify the main characteristics of executablemeta-models. This study is illustrated with a concrete example, aPetri nets meta-model.