[sc34wg3] a new name for the Reference Model

[Anthony B. Coates]

** Reply to message from Sam Hunting <shunting@etopicality.com> on Thu, 2 Jan
2003 19:35:09 -0500 (EST)

> This post vanished in thread noise, and I want to revive it.

> > >You do have me wondering now whether "metamodel" is really the best term.

> I'm with Patrick on this one. (Reminds me of the old jokes about data,
> metadata, metametadata ...)

I took this thread with Patrick off-line as I hadn't thought it to be of
general interest.  To summarise, Patrick convinced me that the RM is not a
metamodel in the most technically correct sense, since it doesn't provide a
general model-of-models framework.  From my reading, it really seeks to provide
a low-level canonical model of topic maps that can be used to unambiguously
express what happens when you perform certain TM operations, such as merging. 
In that sense it isn't a metamodel.

On the other hand, in the time since Patrick & I finished this thread
ourselves, I have wondered whether the RM could be used to represent RDF and/or
DAML+OIL/OWL.  If so, then perhaps it *is* a model for a class of models, which
would make it a metamodel.  Either way, we accepted that in spite of some
potential incorrectness of usage, "metamodel" would probably be the term that
is chosen, and perhaps the term that best conveys the RM's role to the masses,
who also don't know what a metamodel really is.

	Cheers,
		Tony.
====
Anthony B. Coates, Information & Software Architect
mailto:abcoates@TheOffice.net
MDDL Editor (Market Data Definition Language)
http://www.mddl.org/
FpML AWG Member (Financial Products Markup Language)
http://www.fpml.org/