(Soden & Eichler, 2009) discusses the need of extending the Eclipse Modeling Project under which EMF (based on MOF) is used to define Domain Specific Languages (DSL) and GMF to define Graphical Model Editors and Xtext to define Human Understandable Textual Notations (HUTN) for a defined DSL with a Model Execution Framework (MXF) that allows for the declarative specification of a model execution and simulation.

The idea is to extend an abstract syntax, that defines a Domain Specific Language (DSL) – for example a finite state machine language – with a model that describes runtime instances of the model (including state, counter, … ) plus a declarative (in this case even graphical) model for the behavior of the model simulation.

What I like in the idea is the thrive to make the DSL architect more productive in his work by relieving his duty to implement a model interpreter or model to code translator, if he invents a new DSL. By this, he can write a new DSL (like for example BPMN 2.0) and would be able to simulate the behavior of the execution semantics without implementation work – just by declarative modeling. That is the promise of the approach.

One could discuss, if the chosen Language MAction is the best way to describe model execution semantics, but at least it has to be taken serious. For me this is an interesting DSL prototyping environment. If one looks at model execution at runtime, I do not think that the Eclipse Environment is the right architecture for this. But it is a start – as I said – for DSL Prototyping. Other points that should be discussed in the future in my opinion are:

• Runtime Optimization for the Model by adding shortcuts in the Runtime Model
• Modeling of big examples (like BPMN 2.0) with the new language
• Evaluation of different ways of describing the Model Execution Semantics

References

Soden, M., & Eichler, H. (2009). Towards a Model Execution Framework for Eclipse. First European Workshop on Behaviour Modelling in Model Driven Architecture (BM-MDA) (S. 57-71). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Centre for Telematics and Information Technology Workshop Proceedings.