New Thoughts On Not So Random Things…

Language Workbench Competition: Case is online!!

Sometimes, things can go faster in software engineering. That's why we were able to agree on the content of the LWC case already two weeks ago, and on the final version over the past week. So, about three weeks before the planned date, we have now published the case description for the first round of the Language Workbench Competition (LWC). A description of the case is online, as well as submission instructions.

What is still missing is a deadline, which will be added during or after the summer holidays season. We are aiming to organise a first activity during SPLASH 2010 (TAFKAO - The ACM-conference Formerly Known As OOPSLA), but the exact form and contents of that session are yet to be defined.

Language Workbench Competition

Last week I was in a Skype conference call with a number of model driven development specialists to discuss how the Language Workbench Competition should be shaped. We decided that, instead of aiming for one specific workshop deadline at a conference, the competition will be an online event. Participants will be provided with a case description, which they should implement in their Language Workbench of choice, showing how they meet the criteria set by the case, and what additional strengths their Language Workbench offers. The results, in the form of papers and online demos will be published through the competition web site at http://www.languageworkbenches.net, and on various occasions we will submit workshops, Birds-of-a-Feather and other sessions at conferences to demonstrate and discuss the results with competition participants and other interested parties.

The goal of the competition is to provide insight in which workbenches are moste suitable for different purposes and environments. There's no prize, except infinite fame and our gratitude, just like (at least in our perception) there's no ultimate general purpose language workbench.

Trends in model driven development (cont’d)

After spending 2 days (one more to go) at Code Generation 2010 I feel it's time to add something to the trends I perceived earlier. I'll prepare a third installment on this based on the comments I received at the Model Driven Software Network later.

The first observation I had was concerning language workbenches becoming more and more of a buzz. During the Code Generation conference we actually started planning a Language Workbench Competition, which will likely be co-located with the conference next year. Based on input from Eelco Visser, Markus Völter, Jos Warmer, Pedro Molina, Karsten Thoms, Bernhard Merkle and others we are defining a case right now - to be resolved by different parties (suppliers as well as users of current workbenches). If workbenches weren't a buzz already it is now, with MetaEdit+, MPS, XText, Essential, CodeFluent, Concrete and others being presented and the workshop in the making.

Second, the integration between graphical and textual DSLs, and combination of different DSLs as part of one solution is also taking place. With MPS, integration between DSLs and programming language is available in a reasonably easy way as well now. Reasonably easy hear means that the tree based concept underlying MPS requires some 'getting-used-to'. It's too bad that the integraion of graphical and textual , as attempted in e.g. Papyrus was not presented at the conference this year. Next year will hopefully show more.

Then, I mentioned the 'multiple views on the same content', also known as projectional modeling or projectional editing. This seems to be mainly a case for the secretive folks at Intentional, but MPS is getting closer and closer to that. Also, at least one solution combining GMF and XText to show the same models exists (I'll provide a link later, if it's a public project). A nice new kid on the block here is Concrete, a web based solution developed at Lear Corporation.

Finally I listed the models@run-time concept seems to be something people are really enthousiastic about, although many haven't heard about it yet. Also, not many solutions are available. In a discussion with Johan den Haan and Steven Kelly, we concluded that in e.g. web or cloud based projects the technical limitations of that environment might get in the way, in relation to performance, usability as well as reliability.

On top of these trends that seem to be at least partially confirmed during the conference, I have to add the following:

First of all, there is still a large community that is not working on DSL based solutions, but has produced more and less successful solutions based on (executable) UML. Although DSL and DSM advocates may deny the feasibility of such solutions, the fact that some of them are succesful cannot be ignored.

Then, adoption of model driven approaches is still very much an issue. It seems to be something that depends on the market in which one is active how easy or difficult it is to get MDSD trials and project started. One discussino led to the conclusion that in markets where (software) engineers are working in closer cooperation with end users (e.g. in insurance and banking domains) the adoption of solutions based on domain modeling and domain specific languages is easier to achieve than in high tech environments, where developers tend to be more technology oriented and hardly ever meet with a customer or end user. This based on differences in aspects like developer focus, customer communication and organisational structures. Tomorrow's workshop discussion around Spring Roo may shed more light on this, if so I'll get back to it.

All in all, the presentations at CG2010 and the discussions I had during the breaks and in the evenings seem to confirm some of my observations, but also lead to new ones.

To be continued....

Trends in modeldriven software development

Looking over the past few months, say since PPL 2009, I perceived the following trends in model driven development.

• language workbench is a term that seems to be replacing the notions of MDA-tool and DSL-toolkit very rapidly now. Of course the term is not new, but it is becoming more common.
• in DSL world, the distinction between graphical and textual DSLs is rapidly being replaced by integration of the two, see cooperation between Itemis and MetaCase, but also recent attempts to integrate XText with GMF
• language workbenches with multiple views on the same content, like Intentional has been promoting, are showing up in multiple places right now (MPS, Spoofax, the integration mentioned above)
• given what I read in the ACM Journal a couple of months ago various articles in IEEE Computer ed. October 2009, models@runtime will become more visible shortly as well

Which trends do you, MDSNetwork members, perceive, both in practise and in research? I'd be glad to hear from you, since I've been asked to do an article on trends in this area (for a Dutch magazine) over the next few weeks. Of course an English translation will follow shortly afterwards on my blog.

I'd be more than happy to receive ideas here, in mail, through the Model Driven Software Network, through twitter or face-to-face during CG2010 next week.