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What you can build

Model federation is a way to reuse models and make them interact, while controlling what propagates between models, slots and concepts. The propagation can be automatic, triggered by the user, or controlled through dialogs. In practice, this gives five kinds of results.

Dashboards over heterogeneous sources​

Collect data from a spreadsheet, a database, an XML file and a service into one virtual model, and present it in one place. Values are retrieved from their sources when needed rather than copied into a new format, so the dashboard reflects the sources as they are.

Synchronised models​

Two models that describe overlapping things, in two tools or two formats, can be kept in step by defining the synchronisation rules as a model between them. The rules say what corresponds to what and what happens when one side changes.

Example. The test suite of Openflexo includes a use case that synchronises two EMF models, with scripts that load them, generate a counterpart, synchronise, and undo the federation. An older tutorial, Working on model mapping, walks through the idea.

Consistency checking​

Checking properties among models is a generalisation of synchronisation: instead of making two models agree, the federation is used to verify that they do. It is an alternative to traces between tools and to verification by hand.

New models computed from existing ones​

A virtual model can select information from several models, point of view by point of view, and compute new information that exists in none of them.

Example. The digital-twin demonstration federates two files owned by two teams that do not talk to each other: an XML description of a packaging line (a subset of AutomationML) and a maintenance workbook (an Excel file with an asset register, timestamped readings and interventions). Which equipment is critical, which one is drifting, and which one to fix first are properties computed by the virtual model. They are written in neither file, and the workbook contains no formula.

Graphical editors without writing code​

Because Openflexo separates a concept from the way it is drawn, you can build a graphical editor for your own domain-specific language and refine the language while you use it.

Examples. The tutorials build a diagram editor and a Petri net editor with the FreeModellingEditor. The MULTI Process Challenge solution provides a graphical editor for process types and another for enacted processes, both built with Openflexo.

Where to go from here​