Establish term meta-pointer

[enikao]

The term meta-link describes references from M1 to M2, e.g. from an instance to its concept.
All known meta-links are:

• Metamodel usage to its Metamodel.key
• Node to its FeaturesContainer.key
• Property value in a node to its Property.key
• List of children in a node to its Containment.key
• List of references in a node to its Reference.key

meta-links are conceptually always triplets, consisting of:

• Concept/Feature key
• Metamodel key
• Metamodel version

In some contexts, the physical representation might be compressed (e.g. factor out Metamodel.key+version from meta-links).

[markusvoelter]

How about meta-pointer? Just because we use "link" and "reference" in the models, so this one might be less confusable.

[dslmeinte]

Why not stick to “key”, or maybe “coding key”?

[enikao]

key is the property in M3. Here we talking about the link between M1 and M2, mentioned in (M1) serialization as concept, property, or key in JSON objects of links. So I think they are different things, thus we should use a different term.

[joswarmer]

Do we need the metamodel key and the metamodel version for every "meta-link"? Ot can we put the metamodel key and metamodel version somewhere in the JSON once. Assuming that any response containing a bunch of nodes always refering to the same metamodel / metamodel version.
O I see, we can have multiple metamodels used in one model, so maybe we can put all metamodel keys/version combinations once in the JSON?

[ftomassetti]

This issue (#93) uses the term meta-pointer. Should we go for it or meta-link?

Currently in the Java implementation we have MetaPointers, but we can rename it easily to MetaLink if needed.

[enikao]

We haven't decided on this yet.
Personally, I prefer meta-pointer, as we already have the term "link" somewhere else.