ISO/IEC 19763-1:2007

INTERNATIONAL ISO/IEC
STANDARD 19763-1
First edition
2007-02-01
Information technology — Metamodel
framework for interoperability (MFI) —
Part 1:
Reference model
Technologies de l'information — Cadre du métamodèle pour
l'interopérabilité (MFI) —
Partie 1: Modèle de référence
Reference number
©
ISO/IEC 2007
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©  ISO/IEC 2007
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ii © ISO/IEC 2007 – All rights reserved

Contents Page
Foreword. v
Introduction . vi
1 Scope . 1
2 Conformance. 1
3 Normative references . 1
4 Terms, definitions and abbreviated terms . 1
4.1 Terms and definitions. 1
4.2 Abbreviated terms . 3
5 Metamodel framework architecture . 4
5.1 Structure of ISO/IEC 19763 . 4
5.2 Objectives of ISO/IEC 19763 . 5
5.3 Exclusions . 5
5.4 Area of applicability. 5
5.5 Metamodel framework architecture . 7
5.6 Part 2: Core model. 11
5.7 Part 3: Metamodel for ontology registration. 15
5.8 Part 4: Metamodel for model mapping .17
5.9 Part 5: Metamodel for model constructs.18
Bibliography . 19

© ISO/IEC 2007 – All rights reserved iii

Figures
Figure 1 — Overall structure of ISO/IEC 19763.4
Figure 2 — Registry federation with metamodel framework.5
Figure 3 — Metamodel framework to support sharing of models .6
Figure 4 — Registry federation by the metamodel frameworks.7
Figure 5 — Metamodel framework architecture.7
Figure 6 — Metamodel framework architecture and overall structure of meta hierarchy.9
Figure 7 — Structure of the metamodel framework architecture .10
Figure 8 — MFI registration concept.11
Figure 9 — Core model as a successor of both MOF and common facilities of MDR .11
Figure 10 — Concept of the four quadrant registration scheme.12
Figure 11 — High level view of MFI core model .13
Figure 12 — Scheme for model registration .13
Figure 13 — Representation of concept .14
Figure 14 — Registration of metamodels as an upper model .14
Figure 15 — Registration of detailed model following upper model .15
Figure 16 — Relationship between ISO/IEC 19763-3 (MFI-3) and MDR (ISO/IEC 11179) .16
Figure 17 — Metamodel for ontology registration.17
Figure 18 — Metamodel for model mapping.18

iv © ISO/IEC 2007 – All rights reserved

Foreword
ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (the International Electrotechnical
Commission) form the specialized system for worldwide standardization. National bodies that are members of
ISO or IEC participate in the development of International Standards through technical committees
established by the respective organization to deal with particular fields of technical activity. ISO and IEC
technical committees collaborate in fields of mutual interest. Other international organizations, governmental
and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO and IEC, also take part in the work. In the field of information
technology, ISO and IEC have established a joint technical committee, ISO/IEC JTC 1.
International Standards are drafted in accordance with the rules given in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2.
The main task of the joint technical committee is to prepare International Standards. Draft International
Standards adopted by the joint technical committee are circulated to national bodies for voting. Publication as
an International Standard requires approval by at least 75 % of the national bodies casting a vote.
Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of patent
rights. ISO and IEC shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.
ISO/IEC 19763-1 was prepared by Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology,
Subcommittee SC 32, Data management and interchange.
ISO/IEC 19763 consists of the following parts, under the general title Information technology — Metamodel
framework for interoperability (MFI):
— Part 1: Reference model
— Part 2: Core model
— Part 3: Metamodel for ontology registration
— Part 4: Metamodel for model mapping
© ISO/IEC 2007 – All rights reserved v

Introduction
Due to the spread of E-business (EB) and E-commerce (EC) over the Internet, the effective exchange of
business transactions and other related information across countries and cultures has become a prime
concern for people both inside and outside the IT industry.
To follow the current trends of EB or EC, industrial consortia have engaged in the standardization of domain-
specific objects including business process models and software components using common modeling
facilities and interchange facilities such as UML and XML. They are very active in standardizing domain-
specific business process models and standard modeling constructs such as data elements, entity profiles,
and value domains.
Following these trends, many standardization activities have focused on the facilities or schema that could
enable the collaborations among different organizations, such as
a) modeling facilities or modeling architectures such as UML or MDA;
b) E-Business procedures and exchange formats such as ISO/IEC 15944, ebXML, XMI and SOAP;
c) description facilities of information resources such as XML, RDF and WSDL;
d) business process integration facilities such as BPEL and BPMN;
e) registry facilities such as ISO/IEC 11179 (MDR), ebXML-R&R, UDDI;
f) meta-modeling facilities such as MOF;
g) ontology descriptive facilities such as OWL, DAML+OIL;
h) facilities for logic such as CL, CG and DL.
In addition to the above, other activities which focus on the contents to be treated by facilities have emerged
as subjects of standardization.
These include
a) common models for various business domains, such as GCI, CPFR and HL7;
b) modeling profiles or modeling patterns such as UML profile for EDOC and EAI;
c) registry metamodels such as ebXML RIM and HL7 RIM;
d) metamodels such as CWM for data warehouse and ODM for ontology;
e) metadata specifications, such as Dublin Core or ebXML Core Component;
f) ontology models, such as SNOMED in healthcare, SUO in engineering and ISO/IEC 15944-4 E-Business
economic and accounting ontology.
These contents could be stored in registries in order to enable the effective sharing among different
organizations.
NOTE UML and OMG are trademarks of the Object Management Group.
vi © ISO/IEC 2007 – All rights reserved

Many registries and repositories have been developed and implemented. However, due to differences in their
metamodels or disharmony in their semantics, effective collaboration among organizations or communities
has been difficult. New facilities are required that enable a harmonized federation among these registries.
To satisfy these requirements, ISO/IEC 19763 provides the facilities for describing various types of registries
or metamodels as a consolidated set of metamodel frameworks.
This consolidated metamodel framework will provide the following features:
a) metamodel registering mechanisms for enabling the federation of registries;
b) description and registering mechanisms for various modeling constructs to facilitate their reuse;
c) description and registering mechanisms for rules of model mapping and transformation to enable the
harmonization of registry contents.
This part of ISO/IEC 19763 describes the basic concept of metamodel framework which should be used in the
development of other parts of ISO/IEC 19763. The issues and requirements to be considered in this
development are also described.

© ISO/IEC 2007 – All rights reserved vii

INTERNATIONAL STANDARD ISO/IEC 19763-1:2007(E)

Information technology — Metamodel framework for
interoperability (MFI) —
Part 1:
Reference model
1 Scope
ISO/IEC 19763 specifies a framework for metamodel interoperability.
This part of ISO/IEC 19763 establishes general principles for the metamodel framework and gives guidelines
for developments of other parts of ISO/IEC 19763.
The multiple parts of ISO/IEC 19763 are to be used in the development of a harmonized metamodel to
facilitate the interoperation of existing registries or metamodels.
2 Conformance
ISO/IEC 19763-1 specifies no conformance requirement. Other parts of ISO/IEC 19763 specify their own
conformance requirements, as appropriate.
3 Normative references
The following referenced documents are indispensable for the application of this document. For dated
references, only the edition cited applies. For undated references, the latest edition of the referenced
document (including any amendments) applies.
ISO/IEC 11179-1, Information technology — Metadata registries (MDR) — Part 1: Framework
ISO/IEC 11179-3, Information technology — Metadata registries (MDR) — Part 3: Registry metamodel and
basic attributes
ISO/IEC 19502:2005, Information technology — Meta Object Facility (MOF)
4 Terms, definitions and abbreviated terms
4.1 Terms and definitions
4.1.1
domain object
object which represents an entity or a process in a particular domain
4.1.2
domain model
model which represents a particular domain
© ISO/IEC 2007 – All rights reserved 1

4.1.3
metadata
data which describes other data
NOTE See ISO/IEC 11179-1 and ISO/IEC 19502.
4.1.4
metamodel
model which describes other models
4.1.5
metamodel construct
model construct which is used in metamodels
cf. model construct
4.1.6
meta-modeling facility
modeling facility used for meta-modeling
NOTE MOF is an example of a meta-modeling facility.
cf. modeling facility
4.1.7
model
representation of a universe of discourse (UOD) using a normative modeling facility and modeling constructs
4.1.8
model construct
unit of notation for modeling
NOTE More generic term for modeling element. Sometimes the term is used to include metadata, code and object
patterns rather than the notations of a particular modeling facility such as UML.
4.1.9
modeling facility
set of rules and notations for use when modeling
NOTE UML is a typical example.
4.1.10
ontology
description of a universe of discourse in a language that a computer can process
4.1.11
upper model
model which restricts or guides other models
NOTE See 4.1.3.
4.1.12
lower model
model which is restricted or guided by another (upper) model
2 © ISO/IEC 2007 – All rights reserved

4.2 Abbreviated terms
BPMN Business Process Modeling Notation
BPEL Business Process Execution Language
CWM Common Warehouse Metamodel
GCI Global Commerce Initiative
CPFR Continuous Planning Forecasting and Replenishment
CL Common Logic (see ISO/IEC 24707, to be published)
ebXML electronic business XML (see ISO/TS 15000:2004)
EAI Enterprise Application Integration
EDOC Enterprise Distributed Object Computing (see bibliography item [12])
HL7 Health Level 7
IDEF1X Integrated DEFnition Method
MDA Model Driven Architecture
MOF Meta Object Facility (see ISO/IEC 19502:2005)
MFI Metamodel Framework for Interoperability (i.e. ISO/IEC 19763-1)
ODM Ontology Definition Metamodel
OWL Web Ontology Language
RDF Resource Description Framework
SOAP Simple Object Access Protocol
SUO Standard Upper Ontology
SNOMED Systematized NOmenclature of MEDicine
UDDI Universal Description, Discovery and Integration
UML Unified Modeling Language
UOD Universe of Discourse
WSDL Web Service Description Language
XMI XML Metadata Interchange (see ISO/IEC 19503:2005)
XML eXtended Markup Language
© ISO/IEC 2007 – All rights reserved 3

5 Metamodel framework architecture
This clause describes the structure of the ISO/IEC 19763 family of standards and the architecture of
metamodel framework to be materialized with multiple parts of ISO/IEC 19763.
5.1 Structure of ISO/IEC 19763
Figure 1 illustrates the overall structure of ISO/IEC 19763. However, this structure does not exclude the
possibility of future extensions adding other useful metamodels, such as a metamodel for model constructs or
the registration procedure.
Part-1: Reference model
Part-2 :
Core model
Part-3: Part-4:
Metamodel
Metamodel
for ontology registration
for model mapping
Part-5:
Metamodel for model constructs
Part-6:
Registration procedure
Figure 1 — Overall structure of ISO/IEC 19763
Part 1: Reference model
ISO/IEC 19763-1 specifies the concepts and an overall architecture of the metamodel framework standard to
be applied in the development and the registration of the following individual metamodel frameworks.
Part 2: Core model
ISO/IEC 19763-2 specifies the core model of the metamodel framework to be used in the development of
metamodel framework standards. The core model provides a mechanism for metamodel description and
normative constructs to be used in the development of metamodel framework standards.
Part 3: Metamodel for ontology registration
ISO/IEC 19763-3 specifies a metamodel that provides a facility to register administrative information of
ontologies.
Part 4: Metamodel for model mapping
ISO/IEC 19763-4 specifies a metamodel framework for describing any sort of mapping between objects such
as metamodels, model elements or data elements.
NOTE Any project for Part 5 or Part 6 is not yet initiated at the first stage of standard development.
4 © ISO/IEC 2007 – All rights reserved

5.2 Objectives of ISO/IEC 19763
The objectives of the ISO/IEC 19763 family of standards are focused on improving the interoperability of
metamodels defined by different standards groups in ISO or outside ISO, providing a normative metamodel
framework for registering individual metamodels.
Database
Catalogue
ISO/IEC11179 UDDI
Registry Registry
OASIS/ebXML CASE Tool
Interoperation
Registry Repository
Software
Ontology
Component
Registry
Registry
Figure 2 — Registry federation with metamodel framework
5.3 Exclusions
The following are not within the scope of the ISO/IEC 19763 family of standards:
a) standardization of the modeling methodologies;
b) standardization of the contents of the metamodel such as particular ontology schemes or object values;
c) standardization of the contents of model constructs.
5.4 Area of applicability
ISO/IEC 19763 is intended to be applied in the following areas.
5.4.1 Consistent model development
The major purpose of the metamodel technologies is providing a base for model development efforts in terms
of clear semantics and syntax of the modeling facility to be used.
The standardization of the metamodel framework for a modeling facility could improve the efficiency of
modeling efforts by avoiding unnecessary duplication in the model definitions and discrepancies between the
modeling rules and models to be developed.
5.4.2 Model and software component sharing
Another purpose of the standardization of the metamodel framework is to encourage the sharing of various
types of modeling constructs such as software components, modeling patterns and domain best practice
models in the developments of software systems at an organization or among organizations.
© ISO/IEC 2007 – All rights reserved 5

Meta Modeling Common Facility
Facility (MOF) of ISO11179
Core Model of FMI
Metamodel for Ontology Registration
Metamodel for
Metamodel for
Common Ontologies
Model Mapping
Model Constructs
metadata
Mapping Rules
Codes
Mapping
Targets
Value Domains
Sharable
Patterns
model
Mapping Rules
Common
Model Constructs
Modeling Facility (UML)
Figure 3 — Metamodel framework to support sharing of models

5.4.3 Business collaboration through E-business or E-commerce
E-business and E-commerce have proliferated over the world, facilitating specific standards such as ebXML or
RosettaNet. By the nature of E-business, it is not limited to a single industrial domain or territory. Different
domains are linked by the internet, and inevitably users or consumers will need to access different private
individual registries (see Figure 4).
The ISO/IEC 19763 family of standards facilitates business collaborations through E-business or E-commerce
by providing mechanisms for describing and registering domain specific metamodels in order that they may be
shared among different business domains.
Particularly, ISO/IEC 19763-2 provides a mechanism for describing each different metamodel in local
registries and make them to be sharable by different domains.
Also, ISO/IEC 19763-3 provides a common mechanism for registering administrative information of ontologies
which will be defined in individual domains. This makes it possible to share an ontology by deferent domains
in the E-business collaborations.
ISO/IEC 19763-4 provides a facility for registering mapping rules to enable federation among different
registries.
6 © ISO/IEC 2007 – All rights reserved

Metamodel Framework for
Interoperability
describe
MFI Core Model
Metamodel Registry
MM for Model Mapping
Register Register
describe
Metamodel Metamodel
Federation
Registry Registry
Refer
Business Business
Buyer Seller Buyer Seller
Industry Domain A Industry Domain B

Figure 4 — Registry federation by the metamodel frameworks

5.5 Metamodel framework architecture
This subclause describes the structure of the metamodel framework architecture and the detail concept of
both metamodel framework and the metamodel frame
...