On Automatic Generation of Executable Domain Models for Domain-Driven Design

Domain-driven design (DDD) aims to iteratively develop software based on a realistic model of the problem domain. This approach requires a thorough understanding of the domain's requirements and ensuring that the implementation is technically feasible for deployment. Currently, such a domain model is often represented using programming languages such as Java and is manually defined by taking as input a specification in natural language and UML/OCL diagrams. It is very tedious to obtain a domain model in that way. This paper introduces a technique to automatically generate a domain model from a high-level specification in the form of UML/OCL diagrams. Specifically, we take as input the Activity diagram, which incorporates a Class diagram to describe the domain, and transforms it into an AGL+ specification. The generated AGL+ specification is executable based on the Java software framework jDomainApp. We develop tool support for our method using the Acceleo transformation language and illustrate our method with a case study.