A Generative Approach for User-Centered, Collaborative, Domain-Specific Modeling Environments

TL;DR

This paper presents a generative, domain-specific meta-tool that automatically creates user-centered, collaborative modeling environments from declarative specifications, addressing limitations of existing low- and no-code tools.

Contribution

It introduces Pyro, a meta-tool that fully generates executable, domain-specific modeling environments from meta-models, enhancing usability and collaboration.

Findings

Pyro successfully generates complete modeling tools from meta-models.

Generated tools meet cross-cutting requirements like usability and collaboration.

The approach simplifies development of domain-specific modeling environments.

Abstract

The use of low- and no-code modeling tools is today an established way in practice to give non-programmers an opportunity to master their digital challenges independently, using the means of model-driven software development. However, the existing tools are limited to a very small number of different domains such as mobile app development, which can be attributed to the enormous demands that a user has on such a tool today. These demands exceed the mere use of a modeling environment as such and require cross-cutting concerns such as: easy access, direct usability and simultaneous collaboration, which result in additional effort in the realization of such tools. Our solution is based on the idea to support and simplify the creation of new domain-specific holistic tools by generating it entirely based on a declarative specification with a domain-specific meta-tool. The meta-tool Pyro demonstrated and analyzed here focuses on graph-based graphical languages to fully generate a complete, directly executable tool starting from a meta-model in order to meet all cross-cutting requirements.