Vasco Amaral, Univ. of Mannheim

1
DSM Practice

• Vasco Amaral, Univ. of Mannheim
• Steve Cook, Microsoft
• Daniel Dvorak, JPL/Cal Tech
• Lars Grunske, HPI
• James Tolles, Earthlink
• Jon Whittle, NASA AMES Research Center

2
DSMs vs DSLs

• A Domain Specific (Modeling) Language is a
  language designed to express the variabilities
  within a problem space
• Metamodel abstract syntax concepts
• Notations (text and diagrams)
• Targets mapping to the targets
• A Domain Specific Model is a sentence in a
  Domain Specific Modeling Language

3
Creating a DSL

• The metamodel for a DSL is like an object model
  of the problem domain
• Somewhat like good old OOAD underline the
  nouns
• Also captures relationships, well-formedness
  rules, and notations

4
DSLs vs Frameworks

• Frameworks define hotspots of variability
• DSLs allow you to specify values for the
  variables
• Frameworks DSLs Systems

5
When are DSLs good?

• A family of problems where the variation is large
  enough to be non-trivial to do by hand, but not
  too large
• Space missions (Kalman filters, control systems,
  telemetry)
• High energy physics (data mining, querying,
  visualization)
• Video card ltPAL, NTSC, SECAMgt
• Family of architectures with specific
  non-functional properties
• Organization chart
• Venn diagrams
• What software problems are not best solved with a
  domain specific language?
• You need a family of problems with identified
  variabilities and to design a language that
  allows you to assign values to the variables
• The economics must work

6
Cost vs Benefit

• How many uses to make it economically viable to
  do domain engineering?
• Size of system
• Programmer/tester time saved
• Time during which the program is useful
• Competitive advantage/time to market
• Number of similar systems
• Product family experiences show that if there are
  more than 3 variants to be developed, DSM is
  cost-justified
• Others?

7
Organisational issues of DSM introduction

• In some organisations, existing developers want
  to just write the code like they have for the
  last N years, are not interested and dont see
  the value
• Prototype to show them the benefits
• Identify an agent of change in the organisation
• Workshops, conferences, books, ecosystems
• Corporate new technology group responding to
  management pressure to increase IT efficiency
• Commissioned RD in DSM techniques

8
Hot topics

• Does DSModeling in some way represent a decrease
  in interest in objects?
• How to validate models?
• Invariants, consistency checking
• How to generate tests as well as code?
• How to ensure a good user experience from a
  generated tool?
• How to separate domain elements from non-domain
  elements?
• How to do mappings? One-way, both ways