PIM to PSM transformations for an event driven architecture in an educational tool

This paper presents experiences with the use of an MDA approach to generate prototype applications from a conceptual domain model in the context of teaching object-oriented domain modelling. Each conceptual model used to generate the prototype consists of a combination of three views (a class diagram, a proprietary object-event table and a group of finite state machines) and constitutes as such the platform-independent model (PIM). We describe in detail how our event-driven PIM is transformed into an event-driven platformspecific model which is almost directly used to generate the running prototype application (the code). We conclude with a discussion of the lessons we learned, problems we faced, potential solutions and critical aspects for a successful MDA story.