Managing evolution of domain-specific modeling languages in practice

Domain-specific languages and models have testified to improve development speed and quality. Just like all software, DSLs need to be maintained while the domain and development needs change. We discuss how to refine domain-specific modeling languages and related generators – along with the work already done using previous DSL versions. We inspect common language evolution scenarios and their management. We demonstrate the practices with industrial cases, some dealing with DSLs been used over 20 years and others been just newly introduced.

Target Audience: Architects, Chief Developers, Principal Developers, Technical Managers
Prerequisites: Basic knowledge in programming and modeling languages as well as on generators
Level: Introductory

Extended Abstract
Almost all talks and conference papers deal with the initial DSL creation, which is typically just 10-20 % as maintaining and refining the DSLs already in use is the biggest task. Maintaining the language and generators, however, are not the only tasks as usually the work done with the previous version of the DSL want to be kept and applied with newer language version. This talk addresses this 80 % of maintenance work and shows practices from industry on various ways to maintain the domain-specific languages and generators along with work already done. Cases are illustrated with examples.