Glossary

Meta Model
Model
Model Driven Software Development
Model Driven Security
Model Engineering

A Meta Model is a model that defines the language for expressing a model.

A Model is the description of relevant system properties at a particular level of abstraction supporting the tasks of a specific stakeholde(e.g. business expert, software architect or systems developer). Models in Model Driven Software Development are presented in a modelling notation and have an associated model type restricting the set of used concepts to those of e.g. class diagrams, state diagrams or activity diagrams. Models may contain informal parts like plain text descriptions. In addition each model is conform to a Meta Model as a basis for Model Engineering.

Model Driven Software Development (MDSD) focuses on the rigorous use of Models within the software lifecycle. In MDSD models are mainly used to specify system properties at domain level and to abstract from the concepts of the computing environment. MDSD is tightly connected with the use of appropriate Model Engineering tools.

Model Driven Security encompasses the application of Model Driven Software Development techniques to security related aspects. This comprises the generation of low-level security policies based on business level security models and the use of model based test frameworks for security testing.

Model Engineering provides methods and tools for the systematic use of Models throughout their lifecycle. This comprises the development, change management, validation, analysis and execution of models.