The Grand Challenge of Scalability for Model Driven Engineering

Scalability is particularly important for the adoption of Model Driven Engineering (MDE) in an industrial context. The current focus of research in MDE is on declarative languages for model management, and scalable mechanisms for persisting models (e.g., using databases). In this paper we claim that, instead, modularity and encapsulation in modelling languages should be the main focus. We justify this claim by demonstrating how these two principles apply to a related domain --- code development --- where the issue of scalability has been addressed to a much greater extent than in MDE.