MERA: meta language for software engineering

Abstract

MERA (Meta Entity-Relation-Attribute) is a versatile graphical language which can be used for modeling and analysis of the user requirements, for building a prototype, for representing designer's knowledge for controlling design process, etc. The current version of MERA has capacity for animation, view operation, user adaptability, and some semantic level processing. It also contains dozens of modeling formalisms which were created to support various tasks in the software engineering practice. The authors have created many tools to support the MERA language including a syntax-driven graph editor, user interface simulator, requirements analysis and prototyping environments, methodology adaptable design environment, requirements interview system and program understanding system. This paper presents the important features of the MERA language and MERA based software engineering tools.<>