CHESS: a model-driven engineering tool environment for aiding the development of complex industrial systems

Abstract

Modern software systems require advanced design support especially capable of mastering rising complexity, as well as of automating as many development tasks as possible. Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is earning consideration as a solid response to those challenges on account of its support for abstraction and domain specialisation. However, MDE adoption often shatters industrial practice because its novelty opposes the need to preserve vast legacy and to not disband the skills matured in pre-MDE or alternative development solutions. This work presents the CHESS tool environment, a novel approach for cross-domain modelling of industrial complex systems. It leverages on UML profiling and separation of concerns realised through the specification of well-defined design views, each of which addresses a particular aspect of the problem. In this way, extra-functional, functional, and deployment descriptions of the system can be given in a focused manner, avoiding issues pertaining to distinct concerns to interfere with one another.