META-MODEL FOR ASSOCIATING MULTIPLE PHYSICAL REPRESENTATIONS OF LOGICALLY EQUIVALENT ENTITIES IN MESSAGING AND OTHER APPLICATIONS

摘要

A meta-model for creating models of alternative physical representations oflogically equivalent entities, such as alternative wire format representationsof logicallyequivalent messages, includes a logical meta-model and a physical meta-model.Thelogical meta-model provides logical entity component classes for creating alogicalmodel which describes, in a platform and programming language neutral manner(e.g.as an XML schema), the logical structure of the modeled entity as a hierarchyof logicalentity components. The physical meta-model provides classes for creating aphysicalmodel which describes the alternative physical representations. The physicalmeta-modelincludes Base Classes representative of generic physical representations ofthelogical entity components, with "correspondence associations" being definedbetweenthe Base Classes and corresponding logical entity component classes. Thephysicalmeta-model further includes at least one set of physical representation-specific, DerivedClasses descendent from the Base Classes.