A case study on API generation

Model-driven software development (MDSD) is gaining access to the software development market, even if some of our colleagues are still reluctant to techniques like code generation from models and model transformations. Convincing the skeptics can be done by showing how and when to apply MDSD in the right way. This paper is a case study on applied MDSD, with a focus on code generation. We describe in detail how to generate code for a large model base, and how this increases flexibility and reduces development time. We explain in detail several templates for generating a C#-API from Ecore models, including event propagation and serialization code. Additionally, we show how to model additional features for existing models, and how to combine models using the C#-feature of partial classes for the generation of code, allowing us to merge stable models with ad-hoc extensions.