An empirical study on the perception of metamodel quality

Despite the crucial importance of metamodeling for Model-Driven Engineering (MDE), there is still little discussion about the quality of metamodel design and its consequences in model-driven development processes. Presumably, the quality of metamodel design strongly affects the models and transformations that conform to these metamodels. However, so far surprisingly few work has been done to validate the characterization of metamodel quality. A proper characterization is essential to automate quality improvements for metamodels such as metamodel refactorings. In this paper, we present an empirical study to sharpen the understanding of the perception of metamodel quality. In the study, 24 participants created metamodels of two different domains and evaluated the metamodels in a peer review process according to an evaluation sheet. The results show that the perceived quality was mainly driven by the metamodels completeness, correctness and modularity while other quality attributes could be neglected.