  Enterprise modeling deals with the increasing complexity of processes and
systems by operationalizing model content and by linking complementary models
and languages, thus amplifying the model-value beyond mere comprehensible
pictures. To enable this amplification and turn models into
computer-processable structures a comprehensive formalization is needed. This
paper presents a generic formalism based on typed first-order logic and
provides a perspective on the potential and benefits arising for a variety of
research issues in conceptual modeling. We define modeling languages as formal
languages with a signature $\Sigma$ - comprising object types, relation types,
and attributes through types and function symbols - and a set of constraints.
Three cases studies are included to show the effectiveness of the approach.
Applying the formalism to the next level in the hierarchy of models we create
M2FOL, a formal modeling language for metamodels. We show that M2FOL is
self-describing and therefore complete the formalization of the full four-layer
metamodeling stack. On the basis of our generic formalism applicable to
arbitrary modeling languages we examine three current research topics -
language interleaving & consistency, operations on models, and automatic
translation of formalizations to platform-specific code - and how to approach
them with the proposed formalism. This shows that the rich knowledge stack on
formal languages in logic offers new tools for old problems.
