An Open Source Domain-Specific Tools Framework to Support Model Driven Development of OSS

Telecommunications companies undergo massive transformations which reflect onto exacting requirements for controlling the costs of new Operation Support Systems (OSS) development and integration. This calls for the adoption of new approaches, which improve agility and reusability. Model Drive Development (MDD), as specified by OMG, can drastically tackle these issues and has, therefore, attracted the interest of the telecommunications industry. Equally important is the Open Source paradigm. For MDD to gain wide industrial adoption, tools should be available to facilitate the OSS development process. In this paper, we specify requirements MDD tools should meet for effective application of the approach. An extensive survey is then carried out to evaluate existing meta-modelling frameworks over the identified tools requirements. Eventually, we present the Integrated Eclipse Model driven Environment (IEME), which comprises a unified environment of bundled Eclipse-based MDD facilities that also supports the automatic generation of domain-specific tools.