Exploring DSL Evolutionary Patterns in Practice - A Study of DSL Evolution in a Large-scale Industrial DSL Repository

Josh G. M. Mengerink, Bram van der Sanden, Bram C. M. Cappers, Alexander Serebrenik, Ramon R. H. Schiffelers, Mark G. J. van den Brand

2018

Abstract

Model-driven engineering is used in the design of systems to (a.o.) enable analysis early in the design process. For instance, by using domain-specific languages, enabling engineers to model systems in terms of their domain, rather then encoding them into general purpose modeling languages. Domain-specific languages, like classical software, evolve over time. When domain languages evolve, they may trigger co-evolution of models, model-to-model transformations, editors (both graphical and textual), and other artifacts that depend on the domain-specific language. This co-evolution can be tedious and very costly. In literature, various approaches are proposed towards automated co-evolution. However, these approaches do not reach full automation. Several other studies have shown that there are theoretical limitations to the level of automation that can be achieved in certain scenarios. For several scenarios full automation can never be achieved. We wish to gain insight to which extent practically occurring scenarios can be automated. To gain this insight, in this paper, we investigate on a large-scale industrial repository, which (co-)evolutionary scenarios occur in practice, and compare them with the various scenarios and their theoretical automatability. We then assess whether practically occurring scenarios can be fully automated.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Mengerink J., van der Sanden B., Cappers B., Serebrenik A., Schiffelers R. and van den Brand M. (2018). Exploring DSL Evolutionary Patterns in Practice - A Study of DSL Evolution in a Large-scale Industrial DSL Repository.In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development - Volume 1: MODELSWARD, ISBN 978-989-758-283-7, pages 446-453. DOI: 10.5220/0006605804460453

in Bibtex Style

@conference{modelsward18,
author={Josh G. M. Mengerink and Bram van der Sanden and Bram C. M. Cappers and Alexander Serebrenik and Ramon R. H. Schiffelers and Mark G. J. van den Brand},
title={Exploring DSL Evolutionary Patterns in Practice - A Study of DSL Evolution in a Large-scale Industrial DSL Repository},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development - Volume 1: MODELSWARD,},
year={2018},
pages={446-453},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0006605804460453},
isbn={978-989-758-283-7},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development - Volume 1: MODELSWARD,
TI - Exploring DSL Evolutionary Patterns in Practice - A Study of DSL Evolution in a Large-scale Industrial DSL Repository
SN - 978-989-758-283-7
AU - Mengerink J.
AU - van der Sanden B.
AU - Cappers B.
AU - Serebrenik A.
AU - Schiffelers R.
AU - van den Brand M.
PY - 2018
SP - 446
EP - 453
DO - 10.5220/0006605804460453