The XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) is an
Object Management Group (OMG) standard for exchanging
metadata
Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including:
* Descriptive ...
information via
Extensible Markup Language (XML).
It can be used for any metadata whose metamodel can be expressed in
Meta-Object Facility (MOF), a platform-independent model (PIM).
The most common use of XMI is as an interchange format for
UML models, although it can also be used for serialization of models of other languages (metamodels).
Overview
In the
OMG vision of modeling, data is split into abstract models and concrete models. The abstract models represent the semantic information, whereas the concrete models represent visual diagrams. Abstract models are instances of arbitrary MOF-based modeling languages such as
UML or
SysML. For diagrams, the Diagram Interchange (DI, XMI
I standard is used. There are currently several incompatibilities between different modeling tool vendor implementations of XMI, even between interchange of abstract model data. The usage of Diagram Interchange is almost nonexistent. This means exchanging files between
UML modeling tools using XMI is rarely possible.
One purpose of XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) is to enable easy interchange of metadata between UML-based modeling tools and MOF-based metadata repositories in distributed heterogeneous environments. XMI is also commonly used as the medium by which models are passed from modeling tools to software generation tools as part of
model-driven engineering.
Examples of XMI, and lists of the XML tags that make up XMI-formatted files, are available in the version 2.5.1 specification document.
[Object Management Group]
XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) Specification
version 2.5.1, June 2015
Integration of industry standards
XMI integrates 4 industry standards:
*
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...
– Extensible Markup Language, a
W3C standard.
*
UML – Unified Modeling Language, an
OMG modeling standard.
*
MOF – Meta Object Facility, an
OMG language for specifying
metamodels.
* MOF – Mapping to XMI
The integration of these 4 standards into XMI allows tool developers of distributed systems to share object models and other metadata.
Several versions of XMI have been created: 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 2.0, 2.1, 2.1.1, 2.4, 2.4.1, 2.4.2. and 2 5.1. The 2.x versions are radically different from the 1.x series.
The Diagram Definition OMG project is another alternative for metadata interchange, which can also express the layout and graphical representation.
XMI is an international standard:
;XMI 2.4.2
:
ISO
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries.
Me ...
/
IEC 19509:2014 Information technology — XML Metadata Interchange (XMI)
;XMI 2.0
:
ISO
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries.
Me ...
/
IEC 19503:2005 Information technology — XML Metadata Interchange (XMI)
See also
*
Common Warehouse Metamodel
*
Web Ontology Language
*
Generic Modeling Environment (GME)
*
Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF)
*
Domain Specific Language
A domain-specific language (DSL) is a computer language specialized to a particular application domain. This is in contrast to a general-purpose language (GPL), which is broadly applicable across domains. There are a wide variety of DSLs, ranging ...
(DSL)
*
Domain-specific modelling (DSM)
*
Meta-modeling
*
Meta-Object Facility (MOF)
References
External links
OMG XMI Specification
{{ISO standards
XML-based standards
Unified Modeling Language
Systems Modeling Language
ISO standards