Abstract

Model-based software engineering (MBSE) is used in research and industry for quite a while. After three decades of improving modeling techniques, concepts, and explicit modeling languages as well as understanding the usability and failures of modeling in development projects, this chapter summarizes the principal obstacles, achievements, and failures of MBSE projects from a personal perspective. We consider the use of MBSE as a failure in a development project, if the methodology fails to meet its goals with respect to the particular project. For example, some reasons for failures are as follows: developers initially decide not to use models (negative cost/benefit analysis), decrease in productivity (increase in development time), or decrease in software quality (e.g., decrease in maintainability, understandability, or performance). On the contrary, the use of MBSE in a development project is an achievement, if it succeeds to accomplish all desired goals with respect to the particular project. Besides the aspects mentioned above, this could also be increased analyzability of the system under development due to the introduced high-level abstraction of models.

Highlights

  • Using models is one of the primary techniques to understand and engineer the world

  • Already the ancient Greeks and Egyptians have built models of their worlds, including mathematical laws and a calendar system to predict the monsoon—it is barely imaginable that a pyramid could be built without extensive prior modeling

  • Construction manual) or have a rather formal appearance and a well-defined mathematical theory. With all this different forms of models in society, science, and engineering, it is not surprising that computer science developed its own idea of helpful models to design and understand software systems

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Summary

Introduction

Using models is one of the primary techniques to understand and engineer the world. Modeling is by far not an invention of software engineering. Construction manual) or have a rather formal appearance and a well-defined mathematical theory (e.g., differential equations for physics simulations) With all this different forms of models in society, science, and engineering, it is not surprising that computer science developed its own idea of helpful models to design and understand software systems. The development process is divided in phases, focusing on different artifacts, and iterations, allowing to start small and to improve the software in manageable steps Phases, such as understanding the problem ( called requirements elicitation), structuring the problem ( called requirements specification and high-level architecture definition), as well as precisely specifying the desired solution in smaller chunks (e.g., use case definition), do not result in programming artifacts but require various forms of models.

Model-Based Software Engineering
Unified Modeling Language and Systems Modeling Language
Constructive Model Use
Benefits and Drawbacks of Using Models Constructively
Failures of Model-Based Software Engineering
Where Model-Based Software Engineering Is Successful
Findings
Can We Draw Conclusions?
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