Comments on CLOSED-LOOP: Visual modeling: Is it worth it? An example...

"it is very complicated to use GMF. In my opinion,...

2009-10-13T13:50:06.562+02:00

"it is very complicated to use GMF. In my opinion, as long as setting up (and maintaining) visual modeling for a certain concept is so much more complicated than the underlying concept itself, visual modeling hardly pays off!"

Exactly! However, not all tools suffer from GMF's problems - or make their users suffer like GMF. Maybe you ought to look at some other tools? I think you'll find most successful graphical DSL cases have used our MetaEdit+.

A recent article agrees with you that there's no point building a DSL (graphical or otherwise) if it takes more time to build than it will save in use. In the case reported in that article, Polar found that building a normal product by hand took 23 days; thinking up, building and testing the DSM language and generators took 7.5 days; and building a normal product with the DSM language took 2.3 days.

So even for the first product, including the time to build the DSL, they were over twice as fast as if they'd just hand-coded. For subsequent products they'd expect to be 10 times as fast.

Of course that's just one case: for more evidence, check out other guru's and user's opinions about MetaEdit+, the five detailed cases in our DSM book
, or the lists of cases and articles on the independent DSM Forum.

My professional (academic) research currently invo...

2009-09-26T00:00:08.505+02:00

My professional (academic) research currently involves visual modelling. It is interesting to see the opinion of a non-supporter of visual modelling, as I usually talk to fellow supporters of this paradigm.

The question you ask "is it worth it?" is indeed essential. It turns out that this is not the case for the article you're blogging about (I couldn't verify this however, as I don't speak German).

However, there are many more mature solutions to this problem. Take for example the tool "AToM^3" we developed in our research group (this is a prototype, so expect no fancy graphics - it's the underlying proof of concept that is very powerful). It is extremely easy to create visual models in AToM^3. Moreover, new visual languages can be constructed within tens of minutes from scratch. A modelling environment (i.e. an editor) for your new language is created automatically. Also, a "meaning" can be given to your new language by modelling tools for analysis, translation to another formalism, code generation, simulation...

We tested this in a master's course, where students managed to create languages, models and transformations for translation and simulation within hours. These students had no previous knowledge of the tool, not even of the model-driven engineering (or as you call it: MDSD) paradigm!

Useful links:
AToM^3: http://atom3.cs.mcgill.ca/ (look for the "basic" tutorial at the bottom of the screen for a quick overview of the tools capabilities)
Paper about the masters course: http://is.tm.tue.nl/staff/pvgorp/pro/phd/VanGorp2007MoDELSedsymp.pdf

I hope this convinces you of the capabilities of other approaches in visual modelling.

Cheers,

Bart

I didn't understand the discussion, maybe for lack...

2009-09-15T16:04:11.277+02:00

I didn't understand the discussion, maybe for lack of experience with visual design.

What brought me here, and what I like, is the photo at the beginning. Keep up the good work, and do you happen to have her email address handy?

Nice article. In the other hand I would ask: "te...

2009-07-08T08:04:31.855+02:00

Nice article.

In the other hand I would ask: "textual modeling: is it worth it?"

I think about xText. xText is a nice textual modeling tool. You can create a DSL and models, based on your own DSL. It will be transformed later in a Ecore model, where it can be used for MDSD.

The problem on xText is, that (because it's so easy) for every problem domain, a new "language" is created. This also raises complexity and will result in harder maintenance.

I think, the approach to embed a DSL into a language (like the Groovy DSL) is a nice way for textual modeling.