What’s Domain Engineering?

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Domain engineering involves creating new software by reusing fragments of existing programs. Similar parts are analyzed and customized to meet the needs of a particular customer, resulting in faster production times and fewer errors. This process goes beyond just copying code and includes building new code to satisfy other customer needs. Benefits include faster development times and fewer errors due to pre-tested code.

Domain engineering is the act of creating new computer software using fragments of existing programs and what is known about them. An important part of domain engineering is finding out how different software artifacts and domains are similar to the needs of a particular customer, so they can be successfully extracted and utilized. While this means that one customer’s software is just a variant on another system, there are unique pieces of software written by the creators. The benefits of this include faster production times and fewer errors.

Every day unique programs are created but, in essence, many of them use the same coding for certain sections. Instead of writing an entirely new program that might use the same or similar coding, domain engineering reuses certain sections in new programs. These are usually generic parts that can easily be recycled without legal issues, as they are parts that can be found in most other programs. Parts can come from one or more programs, depending on customer needs.

In domain engineering, software creators don’t copy any part of the software to see if it works; instead they must be able to analyze the different programs. For example, if a customer wants a certain feature, creators need to analyze the programs they’ve created to see if there are any with similar features. Without analysis, there is no guarantee that the copied code will work properly.

This process may make domain engineering seem like it’s just a model-based system where software makers copy some code and call it a new program, but this is not true. The whole domain engineering process is quite intensive and goes beyond just looking for similar parts. After similar parts are found, they normally have to be customized to the customer’s needs, and creators often build new code to satisfy other customer needs that aren’t covered by the copied code.

Several benefits can be attributed to domain engineering. The program isn’t entirely built from scratch, so it should take less time to develop. This means that the customer can use or sell the program faster, which is often desired. Copied code used in domain engineering is usually tested beforehand to make sure it works, so this tends to result in fewer tests, which also cuts down on development time. The code has already been proven to work, so this often results in fewer software errors.




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