Model-Driven Engineering: A State of Affairs and Research Agenda

Abstract

The Model-Driven Architecture has been launched in 2001 by the OMG. Since then, model-driven engineering has been embraced by the research community but less than hoped for by practitioners. To ensure the relevance of a research agenda, we need a good understanding of practitioners' problems, in particular with modelling. We therefore performed a literature review on the state of practice in the use of modelling languages for software engineering in the last 5 years according to Kitchenham's guidelines. This paper serves as orientation within the research field and as a basis for further research. It contributes to literature by focusing on papers discussing practical use of modelling languages and the benefits and problems perceived by practitioners. The main finding presented in this paper is that while practitioners experience benefits of modelling for analysis and design, requirements engineering, quality management, implementation and deployment, they still struggle with external tool integration/model transformation & export, cognitive fit, visual expressiveness, high effort required in acquiring skills, automated analysis and high effort required in using tools. Other findings are that modelling is mostly used for documentation and requirements elicitation, the most used modelling language is UML.

Practitioners’ experiences with model-driven engineering: a meta-review

“…A previous study [7] describes the preliminary findings of this research. To improve the reliability and expand the results, the review query is re-executed to include more recent studies, and a larger set of related studies is reviewed to better position and discuss the findings of the meta-review.…”

“…The study selection procedure used in 2020, as reported in the previous study [7], consists of three iterations. In the first iteration, two researchers assessed each publication against the inclusion and exclusion criteria using the title and abstract.…”

“…Sixty-four publications were evaluated in the first iteration based on their title and abstract, leading to a selection of 14 publications. Three of these publications were discarded since they were already included in the results discussed in [7]. After reading the remaining 11 publications, 3 publications were selected to augment the initial set [27]- [29].…”

“…Furthermore, surveys should comply with the following criteria: (4) the survey design is reported in the publication, (5) detailed survey results are included in the publication, and (6) the demographics of the survey participants are discussed. Finally, all publications should comply with the following criteria: (7) a discussion of the threats to validity is included. Most publications fulfilled the quality criteria.…”

Agile MERODE: a model-driven software engineering method for user-centric and value-based development

“…is not yet available, though a first proof-of-concept with manual code writing has already been achieved [46].…”