Where MDE and DSL meet

On his blog, Johan den Haan has an interesting standpoint on extending OMG´s MDA standard.

MDE is a broader concept than Model-Driven Architecture (MDA), it adds multiple modeling dimensions and the notion of a software engineering process. While MDA mainly focuses on technical variability by making a difference between platform independent and platform dependent models and by defining transformations between these models, the focus of MDE is also on application-domain variability by adding modeling dimensions for subject areas and architectural aspects.

DSL is a programming language or executable specification language that offers, through appropriate notations and abstractions, expressive power focused on, and usually restricted to, a particular problem domain. (…)

Although they both focus on raising the level of abstraction in software development, the MDA approach and the DSL approach are often seen as totally different or opposite approaches. I think MDA should be enriched to what I define as MDE. In that case MDE and DSL’s are complementary and necessary for a model-driven approach.

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