The Design of a Conceptual Framework and Technical Infrastructure for Model Management Language Engineering

Model management is the discipline of managing artefacts used in Model-Driven Engineering (MDE). A model management framework defines and implements the operations (such as transformation or code generation) required to manipulate MDE artefacts. Modern approaches to model management generally implement these operations via domain-specific languages (DSLs). This paper presents and compares the principles behind three approaches to implementing DSLs for model management and identifies some of the key differences between DSL engineering in general and for model management. It then shows how theory relates to practice by illustrating how DSL design and implementation approaches have been used in practice to build working languages from the Epsilon model management framework. A set of questions for guiding the development of new model management DSLs is summarised, and data on development costs for the different approaches is presented.