Focusing on the application domain: everyone agrees it's vital, but who's doing anything about it?

A great deal of progress has been made in the computing field by studying solution approaches that are independent of the problem to be solved. But there is now general agreement that further such progress is becoming increasingly difficult; it is now vital to begin considering solution approaches that address the particular problem at hand. Such approaches are called "application-domain specific". Many communities within the field are addressing this problem. But how much progress are they making in coming up with domain-focused approaches? The authors address the status of each of several of those communities-domain analysis, patterns, architecture, method engineering, languages, and more. The paper shows that, while some progress is being made, much more is needed before the field can say it has made worthwhile inroads into the domain-focused approach.