Juha-Pekka on DSM

Last week at Code Generation conference it became nicely evident that success with MDD is more likely in companies that have defined their own code generators. I participated a think tank session on MDD success or failure factors and the session leaders, John Hutchinson and John Whittle from Lancaster University, asked people to move between the sides of the room based on the claims made: Supporters moved to the right-hand side, detractors to the left-hand side, and participants that were neutral stayed in the middle. Not particularly scientific with 20+ people but definitely fun and entertaining as people were nicely forced to justify their moves in the room. Session leaders basically tested a bit their findings from the ongoing research work. One of the claims that moved the people around the room was that companies that have applied MDE successfully have mostly written their own code generators for very specific tasks. Among the participants 4 persons stayed on the left side (detractors) and the supporter side for the claim was fully packed.

Great session and the session leaders nicely activated people to justify their views. I strongly recommend everybody interested to follow the EA-MDE research project and even look ways to contribute with experiences. Check www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/~eamde for details.

10th Workshop on Domain-Specific Modeling will be held at Reno, Nevada. This time it is an anniversary workshop since the first one was held in 2001 - albeit we started discussions one year earlier in a BoF session at OOPSLA 2000.

Within these past years we have witnessed the move from general purpose languages to domain-specific ones and from fixed language structures towards open ones. With metamodeling tools developers have now freedom to define languages that fit to the specific needs, enabling better quality and productivity.

The call for papers for the 10th DSM workshop is now available along with paper submission guidelines. In my opinion we have a good mix of people in the program committee: half from industry and half from academia. Detailed program is still open and it depends on you! With two days we have more time for talks, language demonstrations and group work sessions. Again the plan is to make the papers available online and in printed proceedings. The papers from the previous workshops and from almost 400 authors are available online, and there are still copies of the printed proceedings available from some of the workshops.

Since the workshop is held in Reno, Nevada I suspect there will be some DSLs for gaming …

The program for Code Generation 2010 is released and I was delighted to see the large number of talks dealing with experiences. For me it is a sign of maturity and widespread practical use: out of 28 talks 12 sessions deal explicitly with industry experiences. The rest of the talks discuss more the technical side: ways to specify languages and generators or describe a particular tool. In addition to these there are also panels and keynotes, and in particular I would like to mention the keynote by Dave Thomas emphasizing the need for D in DSLs. With 3 parallel tracks it will be challenging to find time to visit all interesting sessions.

I’ve also have a pleasure to join and contribute to the conference: With Steven Kelly we’ll show the roadmap for successful introduction of modeling and code generation. In particular we pinpoint the key challenges and offer some practical solutions to overcome them.

With my colleagues Risto Pohjonen and Steven we’ll give the updated talk of the language design with MetaEdit+ - a talk voted the best at Code Generation 2009. We show that a horrible lie exists in our industry today: it says that defining a graphical DSL is difficult and time intensive. We will lay bare this fallacy and demonstrate how simple and quick it is to create Domain-Specific Modeling languages and their generators. Within 3 hours participants of this hands-on session will produce five fully-functional DSLs, complete with full tool support.

Code Generation 2010 takes place in Cambridge, UK 16-18 June. Hope to see you there!

In embedded software development the need for managing and analyzing different architectural options, both on software and hardware, has called for numerous architectural description languages. Many of them are developed in-house and applied within a single company or even for certain products only, like Koala at Philips. There are also many DSLs that are developed by larger consortiums, like for example in automotive domain architecture description languages AADL, AUTOSAR and EAST-ADL - all advocating domain-specific modeling languages for different purposes. The previous links show how they are supported in MetaEdit+.

One of the most important topics when dealing with embedded architectures is the co-design of software functionality and hardware functionality. This requires languages (metamodels) that are designed from the start to support co-design.

While preparing examples for coming seminar on embedded software architectures, I implemented two languages that are integrated via a common metamodel. One addresses functionality and the other hardware architecture, in particular the network architecture. These languages allow designing architectures separately, but more importantly also co-design by allocating functionality provided in the software to different possible hardware architectures. What is particular effective is being able to see the implications of using different hardware architectures back in the functional architecture. The 9 minute video demonstrates how multiple languages can be integrated so the changes in models based on one language are visible in other models, offering distinct yet integrated views on the system specified. This kind of co-design support is only possible when it is built to the language from the start!

If you wonder how ADLs are used today in embedded software development you might be interested to join the coming FESA workshop in Stockholm. If you want to play with the demonstration language shown in the video, just drop me an email (jpt at ...) and I’ll send it to you.

I've been working a bit in a European research project, MoSiS, studying and implementing domain-specific languages and generators for various domains. Within the project we have dealt with avionics (military), consumer electronics UI, mobile applications, payroll, seismic acquisition, telecom messaging platform, train control, workflow management as well as office systems. In all cases the DSLs have been implemented to meet the requirements of a single company.

The project organizes a seminar March 15 in Espoo, Finland, having talks from Nordic partners, SINTEF and ICT-Norway, Combitech from Sweden and Nokia Siemens Networks, VTT and MetaCase from Finland.

If you want to see practical cases and discuss experiences on creating and using domain-specific modeling languages and generators you are welcome to join the free (!) seminar. Check the program and registration details. Hope to see you in Espoo!

I'm a big fan of empirical research and hope that everybody having experiences on modeling and code generators could participate in a study lead by Lancaster University. They want to document what factors lead some companies to succeed with MDE whereas others may fail. Please use 15 minutes of your valuable time and fill in the survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FGFTS38. You can check project details at http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/~eamde

Why do many MDD approaches fail or only produce marginal improvements, when others consistently improve productivity by a factor of 5-10?

As modeling is a central part of any architecture work, International Association of Software Architects (IASA) has recently identified the need for industry level education in modeling - especially for modeling work where models are put at the center of IT initiatives.

My colleague Steven Kelly is giving the webinar via IASA modeling knowledge community 17th November (15:00-16:30 GMT). He will answer the essential questions on why many modeling efforts fail and how to succeed. The answer is backed by analyzes of 76 cases of Domain-Specific Modeling, spanning 15 years and 4 continents, to find the set of worst practices that reduced productivity and endangered project success. This experience allows him to show the best and worst practices with practical examples, letting you make an informed decision on how to move your modeling to the next level…. making models work.

See details and register at webinar registration page.

Can’t believe this: The workshop on Domain-Specific Modeling takes place at OOPSLA already the ninth time. Perhaps next year we should target something special for the anniversary ;-)

The papers and program for the workshop are now available. What is particularly special this year is the relatively large number of experience related papers and description of various DSLs - this year many addressing the web.

Hope to see you at the workshop.