Multi-Level Modeling as the Execution Substrate of a No-Code Platform: An Industrial Experience with Metada

Abstract

We report on an industrial realization of multi-level modeling (MLM): Metada, a commercial enterprise no-code application platform whose runtime interprets models directly rather than generating code. Its foundation is a two-layered meta-architecture: RBSM, a linguistic meta-metamodel offering one deep instantiation relationship with per-property propagation controls, and Meta4, an ontological metamodel of concepts and typed properties built on RBSM. We claim no new multi-level concepts: RBSM’s primitives align with the orthogonal classification architecture, characterization potency, and the durability/mutability vitality properties established in prior work. Our contribution is an engineering and experience one: how these concepts behave once they become the substrate of a persisted, multi-tenant business-application runtime, integrated end-to-end with storage, an operational constraint layer, and model-driven user interfaces. We use a published MLM challenge domain as a worked, executable, test-covered example, contrast our engineering decisions with five research approaches (DeepTelos, DMLA, FMMLx, DLM, Melanee), and draw on three production and reference models: an ArchiMate metamodel reused by folder inheritance, a multi-tenant ticketing platform, and a 6000-product banking catalog that instantiates down to a client-holding level (a three-level chain). We distill lessons, most notably that deep values are inherited by derivation, caching, and search-indexing rather than duplication, and that integrity is best expressed as platform-native operations rather than a declarative constraint language.