| Abstract |
It has been 10 years since the first Domain-Specific Visual Languages Workshop, at OOPSLA'01. In those years domain-specific techniques and applications have matured significantly, as has this workshop series and those who have participated in it. Several controlled experiments have shown that DSMs are more productive than general model based approaches. As Booch et al. have stated, "the full value of MDA is only achieved when the modeling concepts map directly to domain concepts rather than computer technology concepts." The domain concepts addressed in the workshop series have also matured and evolved in the last 10 years. Visual language applications in early instances of this series focused on graphical representations of mobile phone programming, constraint relationships, and data mapping. Domains evolved to include robotic programming, software-defined radio, software product lines, complex systems, and even models themselves. As graph-rewriting techniques matured, workshop participants focused on developing and evaluating the visual specifications for transforming models into other models, and determining how to best map concepts from the visual (or textual) domain-specific language, directly into the domain. The maturity of the presented work has continued to grow through the years. In early workshops, languages were presented, and techniques were discussed. Throughout the years, workshop topics addressed managing complexity of created models, showing impact on building significant and industrial systems, and measuring the benefits of domain-specific techniques---to provide evidence that was quantitative, rather than anecdotal. The popularity of the workshop has been validated by the expansion of the workshop into a 2-day event in recent years, permitting time to hear the results of others, as well as actually spend time thinking and discussing new topics for research. The visibility of the research has also grown through the years. Refined versions of papers based on those presented in this workshop have appeared in journals and magazines such as IEEE Software, IEEE Computer, Journal of Software and Systems Modeling, Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, and Communications of the ACM. Conferences such as Software Language Engineering have sprung up around the idea of engineering languages, and previous organizers of this workshop have served as key organizers in those conference series. Given the maturity of the organization, and growth of other venues, why is this workshop still held and attended? While other venues provide a place to discuss completed work, it is still important to have a place where still brewing ideas can be presented, and new collaborations can be forged through informal discussions and brainstorming. This is the role of the DSM workshop series, and this year's program provides another opportunity not just to hear what other people have done, but to work on new ideas, and flesh out the most relevant problems for the next year, and the next decade, in the field. This year we have received 27 submissions, of which 18 were accepted for publication. We have organized these papers to emphasize general areas of interest into which the papers loosely fit. Authors from both industry and academia have contributed research ideas that initiate and forward the technical underpinnings of domain-specific modeling. Although many papers are cross cutting in their impact, the papers in these proceedings are categorized into the areas of DSM Cases, Transformation and Testing, Language Design, and Tools and Meta-metamodels. An OOPSLA birds-of-a-feather note brought together the organizers of this workshop series, and what was born was a venue for putting the "work" in "workshop," permitting the participants to leave with ideas for what to do next to improve the field. We hope that after reading these proceedings, you will likewise find the information valuable toward your understanding of the current state-of-the-art in Domain-Specific Modeling, and where to go next. |
