Experiences of Developing a Network Modeling Tool Using the Eclipse Environment

Domain-specific modeling solutions have been promoted for some time in order to improve the productivity of software developers by providing them with modeling environments that are easier to learn, integrate best solutions and provide the possibility to automate software development by generating code from models. This paper presents experiences of developing a network modeling tool in Telefónica using Eclipse GMF. A metamodel based on Common Information Model was used in this development. While we experienced benefits in terms of better usability by domain experts, we also faced challenges such as the high level of expertise required to develop a good enough language and tool, the shortcomings of the tools in providing support for modeling at different abstraction levels, and the difficulties in updating the modeling tool with changes in the metamodel. These challenges must be overcome before the tool can be a part of our development environment.