Domain-Specific Modeling: Enabling Full Code Generation [Paperback]

Steven Kelly (Author), Juha-Pekka Tolvanen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 7, 2008 | ISBN-10: 0470036664 | ISBN-13: 978-0470036662 | Edition: 1

"[The authors] are pioneers. . . . Few in our industry have their breadth of knowledge and experience."
—From the Foreword by Dave Thomas, Bedarra Labs

Domain-Specific Modeling (DSM) is the latest approach to software development, promising to greatly increase the speed and ease of software creation. Early adopters of DSM have been enjoying productivity increases of 500–1000% in production for over a decade. This book introduces DSM and offers examples from various fields to illustrate to experienced developers how DSM can improve software development in their teams.

Two authorities in the field explain what DSM is, why it works, and how to successfully create and use a DSM solution to improve productivity and quality. Divided into four parts, the book covers: background and motivation; fundamentals; in-depth examples; and creating DSM solutions. There is an emphasis throughout the book on practical guidelines for implementing DSM, including how to identify the necessary language constructs, how to generate full code from models, and how to provide tool support for a new DSM language. The example cases described in the book are available the book's Website, www.dsmbook.com, along with, an evaluation copy of the MetaEdit+ tool (for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux), which allows readers to examine and try out the modeling languages and code generators.

Domain-Specific Modeling is an essential reference for lead developers, software engineers, architects, methodologists, and technical managers who want to learn how to create a DSM solution and successfully put it into practice.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This very clearly written text contains useful detailed explanations inside text boxes and tables, nicely designed, diagrams, and generated software code samples.  This is very practical and highly recommended." (Computing Reviews, September 9, 2008)

From the Back Cover

"[The authors] are pioneers. . . . Few in our industry have their breadth of knowledge and experience."
—From the Foreword by Dave Thomas, Bedarra Labs

Domain-Specific Modeling (DSM) is the latest approach to software development, promising to greatly increase the speed and ease of software creation. Early adopters of DSM have been enjoying productivity increases of 500–1000% in production for over a decade. This book introduces DSM and offers examples from various fields to illustrate to experienced developers how DSM can improve software development in their teams.

Two authorities in the field explain what DSM is, why it works, and how to successfully create and use a DSM solution to improve productivity and quality. Divided into four parts, the book covers: background and motivation; fundamentals; in-depth examples; and creating DSM solutions. There is an emphasis throughout the book on practical guidelines for implementing DSM, including how to identify the necessary language constructs, how to generate full code from models, and how to provide tool support for a new DSM language. The example cases described in the book are available the book's Website, www.dsmbook.com, along with, an evaluation copy of the MetaEdit+ tool (for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux), which allows readers to examine and try out the modeling languages and code generators.

Domain-Specific Modeling is an essential reference for lead developers, software engineers, architects, methodologists, and technical managers who want to learn how to create a DSM solution and successfully put it into practice.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 444 pages
• Publisher: Wiley-IEEE Computer Society Pr; 1 edition (March 7, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470036664
• ISBN-13: 978-0470036662
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,049,359 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent DSM book- Read this book before doing DSM, July 2, 2008

By 

Muthukumar Venkatachalam "muthukumar" (Troy, MI, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Domain-Specific Modeling: Enabling Full Code Generation (Paperback)

This book is excellent. It deals with why we need domain specific modeling (DSM), starting off with business value- then defines DSM and provides an architecture for it - the language, the models, code generation, a framework and the process that connects all of these. It follows this with 5 detailed case studies and then towards the end talks about uses and tools.

I enjoyed reading it and am planning to implement in my projects. The authors are associated with a tool that does DSM - Metaedit+ found at metacase dot com and which has a trial download.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Solution-domain or problem-domain, September 12, 2009

By 

C. J. Reynolds (Auckland,NZ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Domain-Specific Modeling: Enabling Full Code Generation (Paperback)

The authors seemed very knowledgeable on the subject.

However I must confess to being a little disappointed by the first half of this book and not reading the second half.

The authors seems to feel the need to demolish UML which left a somewhat unpleasant taste in the mouth.

The domain specific modeling examples in part III of the book seemed to be focused on a variety of platforms and the modeling of the applications were in terms of those platforms. e.g. You should model Mobile phone applications with Form, Query and SendSMS diagram icons. I felt a much more appropriate title of the book would have been Platform-Specific Modeling.

My personal interest is in understanding the problem-domain to solution-domain mapping. This book seems to be simply about capturing solution domain assets diagrammatically and generating code from the diagrams.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A must read for every software products developer, October 28, 2009

By 

Methods & Tools Editor "www.methodsandtools.com" (Vevey Switzerland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Domain-Specific Modeling: Enabling Full Code Generation (Paperback)

Domain-specific modeling (DSM) is an approach articulated around three elements: a specific modeling language, code generation and a domain framework. The book authors work for a company that has been proposing a DSM tool since the last century. This make them first-hand experts on the topic, but you have also to remind which side they are when they talk about DSM compared to other approaches. The authors are conscious of this and discuss it openly, so that the reader can be aware of the situation. This being said, this book is an excellent and convincing presentation of what is domain-specific modeling, what it is not and how it relates to generic modeling approaches like UML. It contains more than 100 pages of real case studies showing how you can use DSM in different contexts (embedded software, insurance, etc). Finally, a final part guides you in details through the different steps needed to create a DSM solution. This part contains an important decision guide that will allow you to evaluate if your domain is suited for a DSM effort.

The book is very well written and is certainly a must read for every software developer who could be involved in the development of software that has some "product" attributes, that is software projects that involve repeated development efforts based on a common domain knowledge. It will also allow you to think and understand more deeply what is modeling and how you can reuse the initial investments in understanding the domain and creating the first products.