Practical meta-model extension for modeling language profiles. An enterprise architecture modeling language extension for telecommunications service creation

Model Driven Engineering aims at changing the focus from code to models. To achieve it, enabling model transformation is essential. A type of transformation is meta-model extension. It is particularly salient for the use of models in defining Domain Specific Modeling Languages, especially for profiling existing languages. Meta-models describing language syntax have a low number of components. Accordingly, an expert-driven approach to extending meta-models is both practicable and preferable to an automatic one, which has a higher level of inaccuracy. We propose in this paper three principles for aiding an expert in practically extending meta-models with domain specific concepts. The resulted language profiles are backwards-compatible. We apply these principles to defining an ArchiMate profile for telecommunications service creation.