Worst Practices for Domain-Specific Modeling

Abstract

Interest in creating domain-specific modeling (DSM) languages is surging, but little guidance is available on how to do it right. Along with heeding best practices, learning what not to do-including how to handle common pitfalls and recognize troublesome areas-can help first-time developers. The authors have identified several worst practices based on an analysis of 76 DSM cases spanning 15 years, four continents, several tools, around 100 language creators, and projects with from three to more than 300 modelers. They present these worst practices in the order that language developers would encounter them over the life of a project.