The idea of a Unified Enterprise Modelling Language (UEML) emerged during the ICEIMT’97 conference (Goossenaerts, Gruninger, Nell, Petit & Vernadat 1997), with the aim of providing an underlying formal theory for enterprise modelling languages. A major motivation was enterprise integration in the face of a wide variety of enterprise modelling languages (Vernadat 2002).
The UEML Thematic Network (UEML TN) (2002-2003) was funded by the EU’s FP5. It had three main activities (Jochem 2002, Panetto, Berio, Benali, Boudjlida & Petit 2004, Mertins, Knothe & Zelm 2004, Berio, Anaya & Ortiz 2004):
- Requirements collection and analysis,
- feasibility study and
- demonstrator development.
It developed and demonstrated a common abstract syntax and exchange format, which incorporated three important industrial European enterprise modelling languages: EEML (EXTERNAL 2000), GRAI (Doumeingts, Vallespir, Zanettin & Chen 1992) and IEM (Jochem & Mertins 1999).
UEML development has since continued within the INTEROP Network of Excellence (INTEROP NoE) (2003-2006), funded by the EU’s FP6. It also has 3 main activities:
- Requirements,
- language selection and
- definition approach (Berio, Jaekel & Mertins 2005).
Starting from high level requirements established in the UEML TN, more focused requirements were collected using a refined method based on a requirement elicitation template. Next, languages were selected from a list. However, the need of developing a well founded way to select languages was identified and originated the need for defining language quality criteria, linked to the collected requirements, that can be evaluated on information collected from INTEROP partners using a language template. Currently, the selected languages are being incorporated construct-by-construct based on information collected from INTEROP partners using a construct template.