General-purpose modelling (GPM) is the systematic use of a general-purpose modelling language to represent the various facets of an object or a system. Examples of GPM languages are:
The Unified Modelling Language (UML), an industry standard for modelling software-intensive systems
EXPRESS (ISO 10303-11), an international standard for the specification of data models
IDEF, a group of languages from the 1970s that aimed to be neutral, generic and reusable
Gellish, an industry standard natural language oriented modeling language for storage and exchange of data and knowledge, published in 2005
Lisp, a functional programming language designed for symbol processing, later extended with imperative abilities
XML, a data modelling language now beginning to be used to model code (MetaL, Microsoft .Net[1])
Contrast GPM languages with dedicated domain-specific modelling (DSM) languages, which like domain-specific languages (DSLs), are maturing and becoming a viable alternative to GPM languages.
