Title: Clarifying the meta

Authors: Vladan Devedzic, Dragan Gasevic, Dragan Djuric

Addresses: FON – School of Business Administration, Department of Information Systems and Technologies, University of Belgrade, P.O. Box 52, Jove Ilica 154, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia. ' School of Computing and Information Systems, Athabasca University, 1 University Drive, Athabasca, AB T9S 3A3, Canada. ' Faculty of Information Technologies, Mediterranean University, Vaka Djurovica bb, Podgorica, Montenegro; FON – Department of Information Systems, University of Belgrade, Jove Ilica 154, Belgrade, Serbia

Abstract: The word and the concept of meta are used in virtually all disciplines of computing. Professionals often use it intuitively and in specific contexts in which the meaning of a word containing the meta- prefix is well understood, at least by specialists. For example, all experts in artificial intelligence know what metarules are and where they are useful. However, the meta can imply much more than understanding some concepts in a specific domain. This paper surveys some of the most interesting cases of using the concept of meta in computing in order to help build the big picture.

Keywords: modelling; metamodelling; model-driven architectures; semantic web; modelling spaces; meta.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICT.2008.019099

International Journal of Information and Communication Technology, 2008 Vol.1 No.2, pp.148 - 158

Published online: 28 Jun 2008 *

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