The XMI Standard

XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) is an XML-based standard from the Object Management Group that defines an interchange format to allow UML tools to export the semantic content of models in such a way that they can be imported into other tools.

Use of this standard gives users confidence that their investment in the creation of models can be preserved.  It also allows exchange of models between tools as part of the normal development process so that information developed in one tool can be moved to another for further development work.

XMI Support in iUML

The optional XMI Model Interchange module allows users of iUML to both export and import models in XMI format.  Currently this supports XMI version 2.1 (UML 2.0).

Both the exporter and the importer have been built using the iCCG framework.  This means that the mappings between the xUML models (held in the iUML repository) and the XMI format are specified using xUML models.  As a result, users can purchase the import/export tools in an "adaptable" form (in a similar manner to adaptable code generators) which then allows then to change the mappings rules as required.

This permits control, for example, over exactly how the xUML extensions to UML (the tags and stereotypes) are captured in the destination tool.

Example

With our XMI generator, this class model:

is translated into XMI of which this is a fragment: