Modeling is an important part of software development. When doing any software, we are all abstract the model of this software based on demand, and then actually develop in accordance with this model. In fact, not only software, for any natural science and even social sciences, our abstract theory, etc., is used to model these areas. I personally think the essence of modeling is to simulate abstract things that we are not easy to understand with things we know or easy to understand. During this process, useful elements need to be extracted and established the relationship between them.
For example, the UML commonly used in software development is a modeling language, or is a modeling tool. Using UML, we can create a model-oriented model-oriented model. UML can also describe the hardware and other models. If you don't care about UML, UML may not be noticed that the UML itself is also a model. For example, the class, object, use case, etc. are all defined concepts. We do just use these existing elements to build our hoped object-oriented software model. Therefore, there should be a more advanced way to describe the UML model, which is the MOF (META Object Facility) defined by OMG. MOF is a tool for describing generic meta models that can be modeled in any field (including engineering areas, etc.). UML is built on Mof.
For example, if we want to model computers, you can first consider the computer's meta-model. Computers include monitors, hosts, keyboards, etc., further can be broken down into motherboards, graphics cards, memory, chips, etc. For each element, you must define some properties to describe it. For example, the display has dimensions, and the chip has speed, etc. In addition, the connection relationship between them also needs to be described. Note that the relationship here is not necessarily fully described, we can define a variety of optional relationships between two elements, and put specific descriptions in actual modeling. For example, the connection of the mouse and host can have a USB, PS2 method, and we only define these two relationships without the need to use a relationship immediately. This model is basically applicable to the computer us usually used, so we call it a meta model of the computer. After this model, it is easy to model a certain or a specific computer. We only need to join these to define elements (possibly part), assign their attributes, and then connect them with the defined relationship. The meta model is a generic model in a field. It not only simplifies our modeling process, but also makes us focus on this field without bringing some extra elements.
So do you have a specific implementation of MOF? The answer is of course affirmative. There is a tool called EMF (Eclipse Modeling Framework) in the popular development tool Eclipse, which is the implementation of MOF on Eclipse. EMF is a set of plugins, so you must download it first before use.
The specific use of EMF can refer to an article on the IBM website, its address is http://www-900.cn.ibm.com/DeveloperWorks/cn/linux/opensource/os- devicemf1/index.shtml. This paper introduces the profile of EMF and exemplifies a forum modeling process. EMF provides a variety of descriptions of metallographic models, such as UML, Java, XSD, etc. The Eclipse plugin can also be generated for the generated model to use after the actual modeling.
