Reducing design time and promoting evolvability using Domain-Specific Languages in an industrial context

The complexity of cyber-physical systems is increasing, driven by integration of more functionality and trends towards mass-customization. This has resulted in complex systems with many variants that require long time to develop and are difficult to adapt to changing requirements and introduction of new technology. New methodologies are hence required to reduce development time, simplify customization for a particular customer, and improve evolvability both during development and after deployment. This chapter explains how these challenges are addressed by an approach to model-based engineering (MBE) based on domainspecific languages (DSLs). However, applying the approach in industry has resulted in 5 technical research questions, namely how to: RQ1) achieve modularity and reuse in a DSL ecosystem, RQ2) achieve consistency between model and realizations, RQ3) manage an evolving DSL eco-system, RQ4) ensure model quality, RQ5) ensure quality of generated code. The five research questions are explored in the context of the published state-ofthe-art, as well as practically investigated through a case study from the defense domain.