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End-user programming may utilize Domain-Specific Modeling Languages (DSMLs) to develop applications in the form of models, using only abstractions found in a specific problem domain. Indeed, the productivity benefits reported from Model-Driven Development (MDD) are hard to ignore, and a number of MDD solutions are flourishing. However, not all stories from industry on MDD are successful. End-users, without having software development skills, are more likely to introduce software errors than professional programmers. In this study, we propose and encourage other DSML developers to extend the development of DSML with tool support. We believe the programming tools (e.g., debugger, testing tool, refactoring tool) are also needed for end-users to ensure the proper functioning of the products they develop. It is imperative that domain experts are provided with tools that work on the abstraction level that is familiar to them. In this paper, an industrial experience is presented for building various tools for usage in MDD. Debugger, automated testing infrastructure, refactoring, and other tools were implemented for Sequencer, a DSML. Our experience with the implementation of tool support for MDD confirms that these tools are indispensable for end-user programming in practice, and that implementing those tools might not be as costly as expected.

Software development is a demanding process, since it involves different parties to perform a desired task. The same case applies to the development of measurement systems - measurement system producers often provide interfaces to their products, after which the customers? programming engineers use them to build software according to the instructions and requirements of domain experts from the field of data acquisition. Until recently, the customers of the measurement system DEWESoft were building measuring applications, using prefabricated DCOM objects. However, a significant amount of interaction between customers? programming engineers and measurement system producers is necessary to use DCOM objects. Therefore, a domain-specific modeling language has been developed to enable domain experts to program or model their own measurement procedures without interacting with programming engineers. In this paper, experiences gained during the shift from using the DEWESoft product as a programming library to domain-specific modeling language are provided together with the details of a Sequencer, a domain-specific modeling language for the construction of measurement procedures.

Model-driven engineering is a well-established software development methodology that uses models to develop applications where the end-users with visual elements model abstractions from a specific domain. These models are based on domain-specific modeling language (DSML), which is particular to the problem domain. During DSML use, new ideas emerge and DSMLs evolve. However, reports on DSML evolution are rare. This study presents a new DSML called RT-Sequencer that evolved from our DSML Sequencer to support, in addition to the Data Acquisition domain, also a new domain—Real-Time Control (RTC) systems. The process of defining models with a new language RT-Sequencer has changed in a way that new end-users were introduced—advanced end-users, which use general-purpose language (GPL) and advanced programming concepts to define modeling environments for the RT-Sequencer end-users. More specifically, an industrial experience with the RT-Sequencer is presented, where DSML was opened for extension so that a GPL code could be inserted into the model to create new visual blocks for the end-user, and the possibility to adapt and optimize the execution code for a particular task. Our experience shows the specific case of DSML evolution supporting another problem domain, and the implementation effort needed to extend domain-specific modeling language with GPL support.