Meta Object Facility

Synonyms

MOF

Definition

The Meta Object Facility (MOF) is an OMG metamodeling and metadata repository standard. It is an extensible model driven integration framework for defining, manipulating and integrating metadata and data in a platform independent manner. MOF-based standards are in use for integrating tools, applications and data [1].

Key Points

MOF was developed as a response to a request for proposal (RFP), issued by the OMG Analysis and Design Task Force, for Metadata repository facility (http://www.omg.org/cgi-bin/doc?cf/96-05-02). The purpose of the facility was to support the creation, manipulation, and interchange of meta models.

MOF provides a metadata management framework, and a set of metadata services to enable the development and interoperability of model and metadata driven systems. The MOF metadata framework is typically depicted as a four-layer architecture as shown in Table 1:

Meta Object Facility. Table 1 OMG's Metadata Architecture