ארנון שטורם

Language design, in Linguistics and in Programming, consists of three main categories: Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Pragmatics deals with the usage of meaningful combinations. The categories are interconnected, and neither can be fully understood in isolation. Pragmatic considerations of MLM are mainly devoted to the engineering advantages of MLM, over the 'two-level' standard modeling approach. The main pragmatic argument is attributed to the reduction in accidental complexity, which results from elimination of duplication of instance-of links. However, the duplication occurs not in the model itself, but in the combined model-data space. Pragmatic considerations referring to the quality of MLM models appear implicitly in discussions about MLM modeling of the challenge examples presented in the sequence of MULTI workshops. In this paper, we discuss pragmatic criteria in MLM modeling. The paper examines semantic considerations, combination patterns, and MLM idioms (recurring fragments). The discussion is based on the experience gained while implementing an MLM model for the warehouse challenge example of the MULTI workshops in our MLM-USE application.