A Catalog of Reusable Design Decisions for Developing UML- and MOF-based Domain-Specific Modeling Languages

In the process of model-driven development (MDD) of software artifacts, domain-specific modeling languages (DSMLs) are an integral part. They act as the communication vehicle for aligning the requirements of the domain expert with the needs of the software engineer. With the rise of the UML as de facto standard for modeling software systems, MOF/UML-based DSMLs are now widely used for MDD. This paper documents design decisions from ten DSML projects which are based on the MOF/UML and which we conducted over the last years. We present our experiences in the form of reusable decision templates for all decision points detected in each phase of the DSML development process. Furthermore, we report also on identified decision dependencies which may occur within a single decision or between two decisions.