Keynote address II: Domain-specific modeling: No one size fits all

Abstract

After 10 years of UML we have still not overcome the problems of the CASE tools of the 1980s. Imposing a "one size fits all" modeling language and generators has not significantly increased developers' productivity. Domain-Specific Modeling (DSM) provides a viable solution for improving development productivity by moving the focus from implementation concepts to problem domain concepts. With DSM, a new modeling language is created for each problem domain, with elements representing concepts from the domain world, not the code world. The DSM language follows domain abstractions and rules, guiding developers and allowing them to perceive themselves as working directly with domain concepts. When the domain is narrowed down to fit a single company's needs, domain-specific code generators can automatically produce full code straight from the models. Industrial experiences of this approach have consistently shown productivity increasing by a factor of 5-10. This talk introduces DSM and shows a series of real-life examples from various fields of software product development, ranging from embedded cell phone software to B2B J2EE web sites. These cases illustrate a wide variety of design and generation requirements and demonstrate how different languages can support different kinds of modeling work. Having a modeling language focused on a given domain allows better code generation, optimization, error detection and reuse. Defining a language and generator is usually considered a difficult task: this is certainly true if you try to make one language for everyone. The task eases considerably if you need make it for just one problem domain in one company areas where you are the experts. In the second part of the talk we will explore the principles of creating DSM languages and generators: how to identify the necessary language constructs, different ways of building code generation, and how to deal with evolution of the DSM language. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.