While the other answers are perfectly correct, there is one additional difference between a "model" and a "configuration". All EMF models (including this generator model) can be modified, transformed and so on by every already available EMF tool (because they all use the same meta model).
This is a huge difference compared to the situation that the configuration can only be read by another tool, if it knows the exact format of the configuration serialization.
So you can create an UML diagram of the generator model, you can use it in a model based graphical editor, you can transform it using model-to-model transformation plugins, you can put it into EMFstore, ... without any of these tools having been prepared specifically for that model.