[Modeling] Comments on interaction diagrams

[Lin Padgham]

I agree that its better first to get the diagrams capturing what we
want, then do the metamodel. My intuition is that this will lead to
less reworking than metamodel first. I think the current work is
heading very much in the right direction, but i think we need to
experiment and explore more examples, before getting too locked
in. Its usually in doing examples (IMO) that one finds problems and
inadequacies. 

lin

> Yes, this is a chicken-and-the-egg type of problem.  Doing a metamodel
> without a diagram is problematic; developing a diagram without a metamodel
> make things impractical.  So, we have started with the diagram as a possible
> way to express agent interactions.  Once we find that it provides a good way
> of communicating interactions, we then need to define the metamodel.  If we
> start too early with the metamodel and want to make changes to the diagram,
> then we could be creating double work.  However, we can certainly start on
> the basic foundations of Interaction diagrams now.  The UML 2.0 metamodel is
> 99.99% completed.  So, we can start by reusing some of that to see if it
> holds up under the agent approach.  If not, we will have a *lot* of work to
> do.  But, in any case, --IMO -- we should make sure the Interaction Diagram
> now reflects what we want to express, before spending too much time on the
> metamodel.  
> Anybody else have similar or differing opinions? Perhaps Paola and Hong
> could start by moving over the AUML 2.0 metamodel to see how well it works?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Jim
> 
> 
> On 3/12/03 5:31 AM, Paola Turci scribed:
> 
> > I completely agree with Hong.
> > When I was reading the document on Interaction Diagrams I had the same
> > feeling.
> > Before we proceed any further with the document, I think it is necessary to
> > define a meta-model. May be, we can start defining a meta-model for the
> > Interaction Diagrams only (if it is possible), without taking into
> > consideration a comprehensive meta-model for AUML.
> > 
> > I am aware that it is not a trivial job, but it is necessary and I would
> > like to contribute to it.
> 
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