Presenting on Domain Specific Modeling at Domain Driven Design group tomorrow

Tomorrow I'll be presenting to the Domain Driven Design group in New York. The focus will be on the synergies between DDD and Domain Specific Modeling/Code Generation. DDD provides a solid framework for developing languages (they call them Ubiquitous Languages), and with DDD the Movie, it's clear that Eric Evans, Vlad Gitlevich et al are also bringing an appreciation of "soft skills" that has long been missing from developer education/training.

At the same time, Domain Specific Modeling has a lot to say about the practicalities of implementing executable domain languages (they call them Domain Specific Languages).

Eric is very clear in the DDD book that a UL does not need to be executable, and that sometimes ambiguities within a UL will make it more valuable to the domain experts for capturing requirements than a more formal language that is less usable or comprehensible by the people who know the business domain being modeled. However, there are plenty of cases where a UL *can* be executable and the question then is how we can take the experiences within the DDD and DSM domains and map them across the Domain Boundary to make it easier to elicit and then implement requirements more efficiently.

This is something I've been thinking a lot about since I first read the DDD book, and conversations with Eric Evans, Martin Fowler, Dan North, Vlad Gitlevich, Markus Voelter and others at ooPSLA '07 in Montreal really convinced me that this is an important space.

Hopefully the presentation will provide a good starting point for the experienced team that always attend the DDD events (really, you should go just to meet the people - a pretty impressive bunch). I'm then looking forward to a discussion phase where people can share their experiences in both DDD and DSM and we can discuss some rules of thumb for moving from UL's to DSLs.

Feel free to come along!