Abstract of "Attribute Grouping"

Abstract of "Attribute Grouping: Emulating Metamodels without Instantiation"

Attribute grouping is proposed as a representation of metamodels without an instantiation relationship between metaclasses and classes. This representation solves the problems which appeared while we tried to define a metamodel for chemical process modeling: implementability in conventional OO systems, placement of classes, and definition of instance-instance-attributes. It retains all the important features of metamodels we need for data modeling except the ability to define class attributes and class methods. Besides providing an axiomatic definition of three different representations of metamodels, we also show how attribute grouping can easily be implemented in C++.