14.3.4 Supporting the Metamodeler
In ???version 1.0??? tools the metamodeler is often left to ?¬?gure things out on his own, and
to hand code things the tool builders were unable or unwilling to implement. Here are
a few of the things that help make it possible to metamodel ef?¬?ciently.
Stability and Compatibility Adif?¬?culty with most prototypes or initial versions
is their stability. Here we are not referring primarily to the fact that such tools may
crash, but to problems encountered when upgrading to the next version. At least so far,
such tools have provided poor or nonexistent support for using modeling languages
and models built with the previous version. Of course such tools must move forward
and correct design or architecture decisions from the initial version, but still it should
normally be possible to automatically upgrade old data to the new version. The fact
that this has not been so is largely due to the low level of maturity of these tools on our
scale of 1??“6. Since the metamodeler needs to write extra code by hand, it is effectively
impossible to provide automatic updates: data can be updated, but rarely code.
Documentation and Support It should go without saying that tools should be
accompanied by good documentation. This should cover the tools themselves and the
metamodeling and generator language they use, as well as tutorials to provide an easy
path in.
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