Domain-specific visual languages support high-level modeling for a wide range of application domains. However, building tools to support such languages is very challenging. We describe a set of key conceptual requirements for such tools and our approach to addressing these requirements, a set of visual language-based metatools. These support definition of metamodels, visual notations, views, modeling behaviors, design critics, and model transformations and provide a platform to realize target visual modeling tools. Extensions support collaborative work, human-centric tool interaction, and multiplatform deployment. We illustrate application of the metatoolset on tools developed with our approach. We describe tool developer and cognitive evaluations of our platform and our exemplar tools, and summarize key future research directions.

We describe the Marama suite of meta-tools. This Eclipse-based toolset permits rapid specification of notational elements, meta-models, view editors and view-model mappings. It has a novel set of behavioural specification tools for both visual and model level behaviours. An integrated mapping tool provides model transformation and code generation support. The toolset has been applied to several significant application development tasks and has undergone a variety of evaluations.