Domain-Specific Modeling: A Practical Approach

Today the software industry has realized that automation of software development leads to increased productivity, maintainability and higher quality. Model-Driven Development (MDD) aims to replace manual software development methods by automated methods using Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) to express domain concepts effectively. Main actors in software industry, Microsoft and IBM have recognized the need to provide technologies and tools to allow building DSLs to support MDD. On the one hand, Microsoft is building DSL Tools integrated in Visual Studio; on the other hand IBM is contributing to the development of Eclipse Modeling Frameworks, both tools aim to make development and deployment of DSLs easier. Software practitioners seek for guidelines regarding how to adopt these tools. In this book, the author presents the current state-of-the-art in MDD standards and Domain-Specific Modeling (DSM). Furthermore, the author presents the current state-of-the-tools developed for DSM and performs a comparison of Microsoft DSL Tools and Eclipse EMF/GEF/GMF Frameworks based on a set of evaluation criteria.