Answer: There are several options for creating MOF metamodels. You can use any XMI and UML 1.4
compliant modeling tool to create a UML model that can be then
transformed into a MOF model using UML2MOF tool (see http://mdr.netbeans.org/uml2mof). Another option
is to use Rational Rose with XMI plug-in that is available from
http://www.rational.com. The
plug-in allows you to export your Rose models into MOF XMI. This option
is however quite limited - the plug-in does not support whole MOF - just
its subset, and since it is based on MOF 1.3, definition of datatypes is
quite complicated. The last option is to handwrite the XMI for your
metamodel. This is however not recommended as it is too difficult and
error-prone.
Answer: Yes, MDR is independent from NetBeans. It only uses a generic lookup library from NetBeans located in openide-lookup.jar. To use MDR in standalone mode (without MDR), you will need the following libraries: