Generating Domain Specific Graphical Modeling Editors from Meta Models

We describe an approach for automatically generating application aware graphical modeling environments from the meta-model specification of an application domain. A generated graphical modeling environment: a) provides domain-specific graphical metaphors in the modeling palette, b) imposes domain-specific modeling constraints to prevent semantically incorrect models, and c) provides domain-specific operators and languages to capture application domain constraints. The domain meta-model is specified using a meta-model which is an extension of the UML meta-model. One of the major advantage of using application domain-specific modeling environment is to make it easy for business analyst to create semantically correct models. We use UML2.0 to specify the domain metamodel. The advantage of using UML2.0 representation is the reuse of vendor-supported technologies including MDA tools. An implementation using the Eclipse framework is also discussed