In a recent empirical study we found that evaluating abstractions of Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is not as straight forward as it might seem. In this paper, we report on the challenges that we as researchers faced when we conducted the aforementioned field study. In our study we found that modeling happens within a complex ecosystem of different people working in different roles. An empirical evaluation should thus mind the ecosystem, that is, focus on both technical and human factors. In the following, we present and discuss five lessons learnt from our recent work.
The proceedings of RAO 2006 @cite_2 , a workshop on the role of abstractions, providing interesting insight into both the role and study of abstraction, both in the context of MDE and in the context of software engineering in general.
@cite_2
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This workshop explores the concept of abstraction in software engineering at the individual, team and organization level. The aim is to explore the role of abstraction in dealing with complexity in the software engineering process, to discuss how the use of different levels of abstraction may facilitate performance of different activities, and to examine whether or not abstraction skills can be taught.