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Assisted-Modeling Requirements for Model-Driven Development Tools

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Research Challenges in Information Science (RCIS 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 446))

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Abstract

Model-driven development (MDD) tools allow software development teams to increase productivity and decrease software time-to-market. Although several MDD tools have been proposed, they are not commonly adopted by software development practitioners. Some authors have noted MDD tools are poorly adopted due to a lack of user assistance during modeling-related tasks. This has led model-driven engineers—i.e., engineers who create MDD tools—to equip MDD tools with intelligent assistants, wizards for creating models, consistency checkers, and other modeling assistants to address such assist-modeling-related issues. However, is this the way MDD users expect to be assisted during modeling in MDD tools? Therefore, we plan and conduct two focus groups with MDD users. We extract data around three main research questions: i) what are the challenges perceived by MDD users during modeling for later code generation? ii) what are the features of the current modeling assistants that users like/dislike? and iii) what are the user’s needs that are not yet satisfied by the current modeling assistants? As a result, we gather requirements from the MDD users’ perspective on how they would like to be assisted while using MDD tools. We propose an emerging framework for assisting MDD users during modeling based on such requirements. In addition, we outline future challenges and research efforts for next-generation MDD tools.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Hereafter, we use the term “subject/subjects,” referring to the focus group subject/subjects that fits/fit in one of the established MDD user types.

  2. 2.

    https://posity.ch.

  3. 3.

    https://github.com/DavidMosquera/RCIS2022-Focus-Group-Data.

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Acknowledgments

This work has been supported by the Zürich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) – School of Engineering: Institute for Applied Information Technology (InIT). Moreover, we would like to thank all RASOP course students and Posity AG practitioners for actively participating during the focus group sessions, allowing us to gather all the data we used to build our research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Zürich University of Applied Sciences, Gertrudstrasse 15, 8400, Winterthur, Switzerland

    David Mosquera, Marcela Ruiz & Jürgen Spielberger

  2. PROS-VRAIN: Valencian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence - Universitat Politècnica de València, València, Spain

    Oscar Pastor

Authors
  1. David Mosquera
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  2. Marcela Ruiz
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  3. Oscar Pastor
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  4. Jürgen Spielberger
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to David Mosquera .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Renata Guizzardi

  2. University of Geneva, CUI, Carouge, Switzerland

    Jolita Ralyté

  3. Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain

    Xavier Franch

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Mosquera, D., Ruiz, M., Pastor, O., Spielberger, J. (2022). Assisted-Modeling Requirements for Model-Driven Development Tools. In: Guizzardi, R., Ralyté, J., Franch, X. (eds) Research Challenges in Information Science. RCIS 2022. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 446. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05760-1_27

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05760-1_27

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