A complementary domain specific design environment aiding SysML

In system engineering, it is a common practice to start exploring the solution space through usage of design mechanisms such as SysML, a modeling language for expressing system design. The usage of such methodologies allow creating design of target solutions through identification of use cases, components, their interfaces, interaction data models and so on. Since it is a generic language, the concepts in SysML require manual mapping to the concepts in the problem domain so that the target design could be expressed in domain terms. This makes its usage effort-intensive since the process of binding with problem domain is highly dependent on domain experts and their understanding. SysML mitigates this by allowing itself to be extended as reusable profiles incorporating problem domain concepts and patterns. However, the process to support this activity isn't well defined. To solve the process of creating design solutions specific to a domain, we propose an approach which includes defining a design environment that is domain aware. It has been referred to as a Domain Specific Engineering Environment (DSEE). DSEE supports the design creation process more holistically by providing support for the various systems engineering life cycle phases other than designing. The developed DSEE is based on the Model Driven Engineering (MDE) paradigm which enables it to be integrated and viewed in SysML terminology. The environment has support for a Domain Specific Modeling Language (DSML) along with suitable graphical representations corresponding to SysML standards, making it easy for SysML users to design systems. DSEE is created as a plug-in in Eclipse platform. This paper discusses about the DSEE.