General-purpose modeling

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2006)

General-Purpose Modeling (GPM) is the systematic use of a General-Purpose modeling language to represent the various facets of an object or a system. Examples of GPM languages are:

- the Unified Modeling Language (UML), an industry standard for modeling software-intensive systems,
- EXPRESS (ISO 10303-11), an international standard for the specification of data models,
- IDEF, a group of languages from the 1970s that aimed to be neutral, generic and reusable,
- Gellish, an industry standard natural language oriented modeling language for storage and exchange of data and knowledge, published in 2005.
- LISP, a functional programming language designed for symbol processing (later extended with imperative abilities)
- XML, a data modeling language now beginning to be used to model code (MetaL, Microsoft .Net[1])

Contrast GPM languages with dedicated Domain-Specific Modeling (DSM) languages, which like Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs), are maturing and becoming a viable alternative to GPM languages.