Unification or Integration? The Challenge of Semantics in Heterogeneous Modeling Languages

Model-driven software development and systems engineering rely on modeling languages that provide e cient, domain-speci c abstractions for design, analysis, and implementation. Models are essential for communicating ideas across the engineering team, but also key to the analysis of the system. No single model or modeling language can cover all aspects of a system, and even for particular aspects multiple modeling languages are used in the same system. Thus engineers face the dilemma of either de ning a unifying semantics for all models, or nding a solution to the model integration problem. The talk will elaborate these problems, and show two, potential solutions: one using a model integration language (for the engineering design domain) and another one using explicit and executable semantics (for the domain of distributed reactive controllers).