Abstract: The invention relates to a method and a system for defining structures of object and/or data models, comprising at least one schema for describing the structures. An upward and downward compatible schema evolution is achieved in that a labeling of a version of the corresponding schema is carried out in a first attribute of a schema wherein the namespace used in the corresponding schema and the type and element name used in the corresponding schema are preserved regardless of the version, wherein the types and elements are expanded only while preserving the type or element name. Unexpanded types and elements are accepted in the schemas of a newer version unchanged from the types or elements of schemas of an older version.

Abstract: For program creation, selected types of graphical objects ("State", "Action", "Transition", "Control Condition") and selected types of program attributes ("Basic", "Fault", "Automatic", "Manual", "Visible") are available. In the creation of an overall program, a plurality of graphical objects are brought into interrelation with one another in an application-dependent manner, and each graphical object of the overall program is assigned according to the invention a program attribute selected in an application-dependent manner. From the overall program, those graphical objects which have certain program attributes are combined in an application-dependent manner into activatable or rather deactivatable views representing subprograms.