Scalable modeling technologies in the wild: an experience report on wind turbines control applications development

Scalability in modeling has many facets, including the ability to build larger models and domain-specific languages (DSLs) efficiently. With the aim of tackling some of the most prominent scalability challenges in model-based engineering (MBE), the MONDO EU project developed the theoretical foundations and open-source implementation of a platform for scalable modeling and model management. The platform includes facilities for building large graphical DSLs, for splitting large models into sets of smaller interrelated fragments, to index large collections of models to speed-up their querying, and to enable the collaborative construction and refinement of complex models, among other features. This paper reports on the tools provided by MONDO that Ikerlan, a medium-sized technology center which in the last decade has embraced the MBE paradigm, adopted in order to improve their processes. This experience produced as a result a set of model editors and related technologies that fostered collaboration and scalability in the development of wind turbine control applications. In order to evaluate the benefits obtained, an on-site evaluation of the tools was performed. This evaluation shows that scalable MBE technologies give new growth opportunities to small- and medium-sized organizations.