Mod4J: A Qualitative Case Study of Model-Driven Software Development

Model-driven software development (MDSD) has been on the rise over the past few years and is becoming more and more mature. However, evaluation in real-life industrial context is still scarce. In this paper, we present a case-study evaluating the applicability of a state-of-the-art MDSD tool, Mod4J, a suite of domain specific languages (DSLs) for developing administrative enterprise applications. Mod4J was used to partially rebuild an industrially representative application. This implementation was then compared to a base implementation based on elicited success criteria. Our evaluation leads to a number of recommendations to improve Mod4J. We conclude that having extension points for hand-written code is a good feature for a model driven software development environment.