Best Practices for Domain-Specific Modeling. A Systematic Mapping Study

Model-driven software development comes in different styles. While standard-based approaches leverage existing language standards (e.g. UML), tooling, and even development processes, DSM requires domain-specific languages and tool support to be created prior the actual software development. The design, implementation, and test of languages and tool support require a wide spectrum of methods and techniques where each of it brings also additional complexity and challenges. To tackle these DSM-specific challenges, best practices have been collected from various application domains and published in literature to guide the development and application of DSM solutions. This work explores existing best practices by conducting a systematic mapping study. We identify and classify studies reporting practical guidance on domain-specific modeling and present best practices from literature. Moreover, we discuss how best practices overlap, complement, or contradict each other. From a total of 309 best practices in 19 papers, we compiled 191 unique best practices. The systematic and comprehensive compilation of best practices is intended to facilitate industrial adoption of DSM in various domains.