Implementing a Domain-Specific Modeling Environment For a Family of Thick-Client GUI Components

This paper focuses on the practical aspects of building a Domain-Specific solution for families of thick-client GUI components. The components lack business-logic, they are parts of thick-client applications and are built to be used through well-defined data oriented interfaces. We’ve observed that with such GUI components it is not always possible to keep the generators simple. Generating the glue code only and pushing the variability into the framework was not always feasible. We found it necessary to generate relatively large amounts of code. On the other hand, we noticed that with the characteristic for our components static variability it is possible to make the modeling process reference implementation driven. We describe an environment that focuses on using reference implementations as sources of metamodels and drivers of the generation process, effectively avoiding duplication of code between the reference implementation and the generator.