General-purpose modeling

General-purpose modeling (GPM) is the systematic use of a general-purpose modeling language to represent the various facets of an object or a system. Examples of GPM languages are:
 * The Unified Modeling Language (UML), an industry standard for modeling software-intensive systems
 * EXPRESS, a data modeling language for product data, standardized as ISO 10303-11
 * 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
 * XML, a data modeling language now beginning to be used to model code (MetaL, Microsoft .Net )

GPM languages are in contrast with domain-specific modeling languages (DSMs).