Software Mumbles and Grumbles

This weekend (29-30 March) is the 7th International Workshop on Graph Transformation and Visual Modeling Techniquesin Budapest, Hungary. It’s more academic in nature than the model driven development events I usually blog about, but I wanted to mention this one as MetaCase’s CEO, Dr. Juha-Pekka Tolvanen, will be delivering the keynote address entitled “Domain-Specific Modeling in Practice”.

Some of the other content of the event does sound fairly interesting for DSM enthusiasts. Raising abstraction is of course key in DSM, and seems to be a partial focus of the conference. Other model based approaches will also be presented, e.g. the expected UML and model-to-model transformation talks, but hopefully many of the other presentations will recognize that there is a better way.

As I mentioned in a previous post, MetaCase’s Drs. Kelly and Tolvanen, have published a new book on DSM, appropriately named “Domain-Specific Modeling: Enabling Full Code Generation.” The reason for this post is that I wanted to also mention that there is now a website for the book www.dsmbook.com available for those who want to get a full overview of the content, as well as some background on the authors.

I already stated my positive opinion about the book, but I’m happy to say that the early feedback I am hearing has also been extremely positive–very good exposure for the DSM community as a whole. This book should really help to open a lot of eyes to the potential of DSM.

Software Practice Advancement 2008 starts this Sunday in Bedfordshire England. Keynotes for the event are Michael Feathers (Object Mentor Inc.) and Dr. L Peter Deutsch (Ghostscript).

For those of you interested in DSM, there are a few presentations not to miss:

Monday 17 March 10:00-13:00
Domain-Specific Modeling for Full Code Generation
Dr. Juha-Pekka Tolvanen

Monday 17 March 15:30-16:45
Domain Specific Languages: Design and Evolution
Peter Bell

Another promising session (non-DSM) is Mark Dalgarno’s talk on preventing architecture decay.
Tuesday 18 March 14:45-17:45
When good architecture goes bad

Enjoy the show.

It’s always a nice when I run across software development gurus that are praising the merits of Domain-Specific Modeling and Languages—particularly when they are converts. Over the weekend I spotted a posting from Ivar Jacobson that was just that. As most of you are probably aware, he is one of the original creators of the UML. In the posting, Mr. Jacobson emphasizes the importance of reuse and comments that domain-specific languages (not UML) are the key. This is the message that DSM tool providers (e.g. MetaCase) have been saying for years now and it sure is great that even the founders of the UML are stating the same.

http://ivarjacobson.wordpress.com/2004/02/08/software-reuse/