Esta es la versión de autor de la comunicación de congreso publicada en: This is an author produced version of a paper published in: Abstract-Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) promotes the use of models to conduct all phases of software development in an automated way. Models are frequently defined using DomainSpecific Modelling Languages (DSMLs), which many times need to be developed for the domain at hand. However, while constructing DSMLs is a recurring activity in MDE, there is scarce support for gathering, reusing and enacting knowledge for their design and implementation. This forces the development of every new DSML to start from scratch.To alleviate this problem, we propose the construction of DSMLs and their modelling environments aided by patterns which gather knowledge of specific domains, design alternatives, concrete syntax, dynamic semantics and functionality for the modelling environment. They may have associated services, realized via components. Our approach is supported by a tool that enables the construction of DSMLs through the application of patterns, and synthesizes a graphical modelling environment according to them.

Meta-models play a pivotal role in Model-Driven Engineering (MDE). They are used to create domain-specific models, and to type model management operations like model transformations or code generators. However, even though creating meta-models is a common activity, it is currently mostly a manual activity, which does not profit from existing knowledge.In order to facilitate the meta-modelling task, we propose an extensible meta-modelling assistant. While primarily focussed on helping in the creation of meta-models, it can also help in creating models. The assistant permits the provision of heterogeneous data description sources (like ontologies, RDF data, XML schemas, database schemas and meta-models), and enables their uniform querying. Different kinds of queries are supported, and improved through synonym search. Query results are prioritized through sense disambiguation, can be graphically visualized, and incorporated into the (meta-)model being built.The assistant has been realized within Eclipse, and its architecture has been designed to be independent of the meta-modelling technology used. As a proof-of-concept, we show its integration within DSL-tao, a pattern-based meta-modelling tool built by our group, and two other tools developed by third-parties. The usefulness of the system is illustrated with a running example in the process modelling domain.

Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) are central to ModelDriven Engineering, where they are used for creating models for particular domains. However, current research and tools for building DSLs focus on the design and implementation aspects of the DSL, while the requirements analysis phase, and its automated transition to design is largely neglected.In order to alleviate this situation, we propose DSL-maps, a notation inspired by mind-maps, to represent requirements for DSLs. The notation is supported by a tool, which helps in the automated transition into an initial meta-model design, using a customizable transformation and recommendations from a catalogue of meta-model design patterns.

Esta es la versión de autor de la comunicación de congreso publicada en: This is an author produced version of a paper published in: