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On model compatibility with referees and contexts

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Abstract

A model-based engineering discipline presupposes that models are organised by creating relationships between them. While there has been considerable work on understanding what it means to instantiate one model from another, little is known about when a model should be considered to be a specialisation of another one. This article motivates and discusses ways of defining specialisation relationships between models, languages, and transformations respectively. Consideration is given to both structural and behavioural compatibility concerns. Several alternatives of defining a specialisation relationship are considered and discussed. The article furthermore discusses the notions of referee and context in order to validate and define specialisation relationships. The ideas and discussions presented in this article are meant to provide a further stepping stone towards a systematic basis for organising models.

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  1. Victoria University of Wellington, P.O. Box 600, Wellington, 6140, New Zealand

    Thomas Kühne

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  1. Thomas Kühne
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Correspondence to Thomas Kühne.

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Communicated by Prof. Dorina Petriu.

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Kühne, T. On model compatibility with referees and contexts. Softw Syst Model 12, 475–488 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-012-0241-4

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