Experiences of Models@run-time with EMF and CDO
AUTHORS: Daniel Seybold, Jörg Domaschka, Alessandro Rossini, Christopher B. Hauser, Frank Griesinger, Athanasios Tsitsipas
ABSTRACT
Model-drivenengineering promotes models and modeltrans- formations as the primary assets in software development. The models@run-time approach provides an abstract rep- resentation of a system at run-time, whereby changes in the model and the system are constantly reflected on each other. In this paper, we report on more than three years of experience with realising models@run-time in scalable cloud scenarios using a technology stack consisting of the Eclipse Modelling Framework (EMF) and Connected Data Objects(CDO).We establish requirements for the three roles domain-specific language (DSL) designer, developer, and operator, and compare them against the capabilities of EM- F/CDO. It turns out that this technology stack is well-suited for DSL designers, but less recommendable for developers and even less suited for operators. For these roles, we experi- enced a steep learning curve and several lacking features that hinder the implementation of models@run-time in scalable cloud scenarios. Performance experiences show limitations for write heavy scenarios with an increasing amount of total elements. While we do not discourage the use of EMF/CDO for such scenarios, we recommend that its adoption for sim- ilar use cases is carefully evaluated until this technology stack has realised our wish list of advanced features.
