Juha-Pekka Tolvanen

Guest Editors' Introduction: What Kinds of Nails Need a Domain-Specific Hammer?

Domain-specific techniques, languages, tools, and models, such as Fortran and Cobol can easily be viewed as domain-specific languages for scientific and business computing, respectively. Their domain is just very wide. What has changed is the technology for creating domain-specific languages (DSLs). Now it is easier to define languages and get tool support for narrower domains. Such focus offers increased abstraction, making development faster and easier. In domain-specific approaches, developers construct solutions from concepts representing things in the problem domain, not concepts of a given general-purpose programming language. Ideally, a DSL follows the domain abstractions and semantics as closely as possible, letting developers perceive themselves as working directly with domain concepts. The created specifications might then represent simultaneously the design, implementation, and documentation of the system, which can be generated directly from them. The mapping from the high-level domain concepts to implementation is possible because of the domain specificity: the language and code generators fit the requirements of a narrowly defined domain.

Defining domain-specific modeling languages to automate product derivation: collected experiences

Domain-Specific Modeling offers a language-based approach to raise the level of abstraction in order to speed up development work and set variation space already at specification and design phase. In this paper we identify approaches that are applied for defining languages that enable automated variant derivation. This categorization is based on analyzing over 20 industrial cases of DSM language definition.

MetaEdit+: defining and using integrated domain-specific modeling languages

With MetaEdit+ you can build Domain-Specific Modeling languages and tools - without having to write a single line of code. This demonstration shows how different domain-specific languages (DSLs) can be integrated with high-level metamodels, how languages can be created iteratively while automatically updating existing models, and how multiple modelers can work together seamlessly.

Method engineering: current research directions and implications for future research

In this study we investigate method engineering research by classifying studies into three contexts: technology, language and organization. Within each context we examine research bias, research outcomes and use of alternative research methods. This survey reveals the inherent bias of ME research towards tool and language development at the cost of empirical studies. We lack investigations of why organizations develop their own “variants” of system development methods, and how they manage their method engineering efforts. These observations lead us to suggest some directions for future research, which relate both to actual research questions and to the use of complementary research methods.

DSLs: the good, the bad, and the ugly

A resurging interest in domain-specific languages (DSLs) has identified the benefits to be realized from customized languages that provide a high-level of abstraction for specifying a problem concept in a particular domain. Although there has been much success reported by industry practitioners and academic researchers, there is much more work that is needed to enable further adoption of DSLs. The goal of this panel is to separate the hype from the true advantages that DSLs provide. The panel discussion will offer insight into the nature of DSL design, implementation, and application and summarize the collective experience of the panel in successful deployment of DSLs. As a counterpoint to the current benefits of DSLs, the panel will provide a fair and balanced assessment of the current state of the art of DSLs by pointing to the existing limitations and future work that is needed to take the concept of DSLs to further heights. The assembled panelists are experts in the research and practice of DSLs and represent diverse views and backgrounds. The panel is made up of industrial researchers, commercial tool vendors, and academic researchers. The panelists have different perspectives on the technical concerns of DSLs; for example, half of the panelists are proponents of textual DSLs and the other half of the panel has experience in graphical notations representing visual languages.

What is Needed in a MetaCASE Environment

In this paper we look at ways of effectively implementing software development environments through metaCASE tools. MetaCASE tools offer fast and economical means of supporting tailored or homegrown systems development methods, yet they have not been taken into use widely due to their perceived complexity and the lack of development process maturity in most organisations. We offer a list of generic requirements for these tools and demonstrate their use through evaluating the MetaEdit+ tool against these requirements. The requirements are gathered from existing literature on method engineering.

MetaEdit+: domain-specific modeling for full code generation demonstrated [GPCE]

Domain-Specific Modeling (DSM) raises the level of abstraction beyond programming by specifying the solution directly using domain concepts. In many cases, the final products can be generated from these high-level specifications. This automation is possible because both the language and generators need fit the requirements of only one company and domain. This demonstration illustrates DSM by showing real world cases from various fields of software development. These cases describe how DSM, giving first class support for modeling, can prevent incorrect or unwanted designs at the early stages of development, and how full code can be generated from the modelers point of view. Second part of the demonstration will show in an interactive manner both the design side and the use side of DSM languages and generators. Using MetaEdit+ tool for metamodeling, we define a DSM for a given domain and apply it to generate full code from high-level models.

MetaEdit+: integrated modeling and metamodeling environment for domain-specific languages

Domain-Specific Modeling (DSM) raises the level of abstraction beyond programming by specifying the solution directly using domain concepts. In many cases, the final products can be generated from these high-level specifications. This automation is possible because both the language and generators need fit the requirements of only one company and domain.This demonstration illustrates DSM by showing real world cases from various fields of software development. These cases describe how DSM, giving first class support for modeling, can prevent incorrect or unwanted designs at the early stages of development, and how full code can be generated from the modelers point of view. Second part of the demonstration will show in an interactive manner both the design side and the use side of DSM languages and generators. Using MetaEdit+ tool for metamodeling, we define a DSM for a given domain and apply it to generate full code from high-level models.

Integrating models with domain-specific modeling languages

Model integration is inescapable: any non-trivial system will be too large to fit sensibly in a single model. The model will have to be split, maybe into different aspects or languages, different modeler roles and tasks, different phases of the software development life cycle, etc. In Domain-Specific Modeling, the possibilities to integrate models are fundamentally better than with general-purpose languages as the company has full access to the language definitions. We describe and compare different ways to integrate DSM models, based on real world experience of what has been shown to work in practice on industrial scales.

Model-Driven Development challenges and solutions: Experiences with domain-specific modelling in industry

Model-Driven Development is reported to succeed the best when modelling is based on domain-specific languages. Despite significant benefits MDD has not been applied as widely as expected. Costly definition of languages and related generators with tooling, their maintenance when the domain is not stable, challenges in scalability, and collaboration are some reasons that several studies mention. We believe these statements are justifiable but only when applying traditional programming tooling for modelling. Instead we show with data from practice that many of the challenges reported can be solved when using tools built for modelling in the first place.