Towards a tool-oriented taxonomy of view-based modelling

Abstract

The separation of view and model is one of the key concepts of Model- Driven Engineering (MDE). Having different views on a central model helps modellers to focus on specific aspects. Approaches for the creation of Domain-Specific Modelling Languages (DSML) allow language engineers to define languages tailored for specific problems. To be able to build DSMLs that also benefit from view-based modelling a common understanding of the properties of both paradigms is required. However, research has not yet considered the combination of both paradigms, namely view-based domain specific modelling to a larger extent. Especially, a comprehensive analysis of a view's properties (e.g., partial, overlapping, editable, persistent, etc.) has not been conducted. Thus, it is also still unclear to which extent view-based modelling is understood by current DSML approaches and what a common understanding if this paradigm is. In this paper, we explore view-based modelling in a tool-oriented way. Furthermore, we analyse the properties of the view-based domain-specific modelling concept and provide a feature-based classification of these properties.