A tutorial on metamodelling for grammar researchers

•We provide a tutorial introduction to metamodelling.•We compare metamodelling with basic grammar technology.•We examine three distinctive examples of metamodelling.

A metamodel has been defined as: a model of a model; a definition of a language; a description of abstract syntax; and a description of a domain. Because of these varied definitions, it is difficult to explain why metamodels are constructed, what can be done with them, and how they are built. This tutorial introduces the key concepts, terminology and philosophy behind metamodelling, focusing on its use for language engineering, and expressed in a way that is intended to be accessible to researchers who may be more familiar with the use of traditional context-free grammar techniques. We highlight the main differences between metamodelling and grammar-based approaches, describe how to map metamodelling concepts and techniques to grammar concepts and techniques, and highlight some of the strengths and weaknesses of metamodelling via a set of small, but realistic examples.