25th Anniversary

25 years ago the word "metamodel" was considered very novel - perhaps even magical. Nevertheless we appreciated the power of metamodeling so much that we decided to use the term in the product name too: MetaEdit stands for Metamodeling Editor. With the first release users could define their own domain-specific languages with metamodels, albeit only for one language and modeler at a time.

Today, MetaEdit+ supports integrated languages and multiple engineers can work on the same models and even edit the same metamodel at the same time. Modeling continues uninterrupted even when language engineers are changing the metamodel at the same time. Generators can be debugged, and traces are available from code back to models - and even to metamodels. With its API, XML import/export, and command line support MetaEdit+ can be integrated with almost any development process. A particular feature that we are proud of is that customer languages created in the 1990's still open and work with the latest version too. All these are implemented thanks to user feedback.

In 25 years the modeling space has changed a lot too. In the early 90's consultants and academics each promoted their own object-oriented modeling language over the others, and then for a while there was a belief that a single (unified) language is enough. The failure of "one-size-fits-all" languages to increase developer productivity, generate full code, or mediate customer communication saw the focus turning back to metamodeling.

Today, the word metamodel is no longer seen as magical. Whole industries create metamodels to specify their domain-specific languages: AUTOSAR and EAST-ADL in automotive, railML in transportation, HL7 in healthcare, TDL in telecom to name a few. Yes, experienced developers are needed to identify abstractions and capture them in the metamodel, but metamodeling and language definition have become ordinary tasks in companies. There are thousands of engineers who have created domain-specific modeling languages and generators for company-specific needs. We're proud to say that many of the best and most successful have been created with MetaEdit+.

We at MetaCase want to thank our customers for their loyalty and support over these first 25 years. You are the people we want to serve!