Multilevel Modelling and Domain-Specific Languages

TL;DR

This paper introduces a multilevel modelling approach combined with model transformations to enhance domain-specific modeling languages, improving flexibility, reusability, and stakeholder communication in software engineering.

Contribution

It formalizes a multilevel modelling and transformation framework, implements it in the MultEcore tool, and compares it with existing methods through experiments and case studies.

Findings

Enhanced flexibility in organizing abstraction levels

Improved reusability of model transformations

Successful application in case studies demonstrating effectiveness

Abstract

Modern software engineering deals with demanding problems that yield large and complex software. The area of Model-Driven Software Engineering tackles this issue by using models during the development process, but it does not address some of the communication problems among different stakeholders. Domain-Specific Modelling Languages (DSML) aim at involving domain experts with non-technical profiles in that process. DSMLs define concepts with different levels of abstraction, but traditional modelling does not allow enough flexibility to organise them adequately. Multilevel Modelling (MLM) approaches provide an unbounded number of levels of abstraction, plus other features that perfectly fit DSMLs. Their development can also benefit from Model Transformations (MT), especially when these encode the behaviour of DSMLs. MTs can be exploited by MLM, becoming a precise and reusable definition of behaviour. This thesis presents a MLM and Multilevel MT approach which tackles open issues in the field and compares it with the state of the art through literature review and experiments, providing its formalisation and its implementation in the tool MultEcore, together with case studies.