An industrial case study on using language workbench technology for realizing Model-Driven Engineering

Model Driven Engineering (MDE) is a proven approach to improve software development processes by automation. However, traditional development of MDE tooling requires a high upfront cost. Recent developments in language workbench technologies promise to significantly reduce these investment costs. By providing domain experts with targeted projections, the speed and quality of delivering customer value is improved. This paper provides results from an industrial case study in the telecommunications domain and compares the value of using a language workbench to traditional MDE technologies. Evaluation of the approach was based on qualitative research strategy which involved a proof of concept implementation and effort estimations by tooling experts. Our results, using the Intentional Domain Workbench, indicate that applying a language workbench promises significant improvements in several aspects of MDE based software development. Most notably in this paper: (1) improved speed in development of domain specific tooling and (2) improved speed in software development process re-engineering.