Research Project DSL

• Research projects are typically conducted in a collaborative manner by a number of partners (universities, companies, charities etc.) and have a fixed duration (in months – e.g. 36 months)
• A project is split into a number of work-packages
• Each work-package has a start and an end month and is further broken down into more fine-grained tasks and deliverables
  • Tasks also have a start and an end month and each deliverable is due on a specific month
• Each partner declares how much effort (in person/months) they will allocate to each task

Exercise

• Create a DSL for designing such projects
• Create a model that conforms to the DSL and exercises all its features at least once

Why?

• Proposal documents contain several tables with overlapping information (see screenshots below) e.g.
  • Effort per partner per task for a work-package
  • Effort per partner for the whole project
  • Table of deliverables for the whole project in chronological order
  • A Gantt chart that summarises the timeline of the project
• Unless these tables are generated from a common source (i.e. a model) they can become inconsistent with each other
  • e.g. a partner may change their effort for a task but forget to change the overall effort figure for the entire project
• Other consistency problems can also appear e.g.
  • Tasks that start before / end after the work-package in which they are contained
  • Deliverables that are due after their work-package ends
• This is how we actually write proposals for research projects

Examples

Below are a few screenshots of actual tables generated from a model of an EC-funded research project.

Solution

Try to design your own metamodel before you check out the solution below. It is also available in the model solution ZIP file.

@namespace(uri="research_project", prefix="")
package research_project;

class Project {
   attr String name;
   attr int duration; // in months
   attr String title;
   val WP[*] wps;
   val Partner[*] partners;
}

class WP { // work-package
   val Task[*] tasks;
   attr String title;
   ref Partner leader;
   attr String type; // research, development, management etc.
   val Effort[*] effort;
   val Deliverable[*] deliverables;
}

class Task {
   attr String title;
   attr int start; // month from the start of the project
   attr int end; // month from the start of the project
   ref Partner[*] partners;
}

class Deliverable {
   attr String title;
   attr int due; // month from the start of the project
   attr String nature; // software, report etc.
   attr String dissemination; // public, consortium, funder etc.
   ref Partner partner;
}

class Effort {
   ref Partner partner;
   attr float months;
}

class Partner {
   id attr String ~id;
   attr String name;
   attr String country;
}