For the message translation and validation domain, a
PRODUCTIVITY 23
dedicated domain-speci?¬?c language and generator were developed and compared
against currently used manual practices using ADA.
In the study, the researchers analyzed the experiments statistically by comparing
the variances. More than 130 development tasks, including both initial development
and maintenance, were studied. The study was well planned having a control project
making the same functionality with traditional manual practices. It highlighted the
productivity gains of the domain-speci?¬?c approach over manual practices, showing a
300% increase in productivity. Regardless of the tasks, developers consistently
expended less effort to accomplish tasks with domain-speci?¬?c languages and
generators than with manual practices. The differences in the average performance of
the subjects are statistically signi?¬?cant at con?¬?dence levels exceeding 99%.
Although the system developed was not a product line like the mobile phones
discussed earlier, the researchers found that the domain-speci?¬?c approach gives
???superior ?¬‚exibility in handling a greater range of speci?¬?cations??? than with code
components. In other words, speci?¬?cations are easier to handle as they operated at a
higher level of abstraction than the implementation code.
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