Impact case study database

Model-based software engineering is the practice of promoting domain-specific models to first-class citizens of the software engineering process, using such models to analyse, simulate and reason about properties of the system under development, and eventually automatically generate from them (parts of) its implementation. Epsilon is an open-source platform [5.1] that offers an integrated set of state-of-the-art languages and tools for automating many of these tasks.

Epsilon has been adopted across the systems and software engineering industry by a wide range of organisations such as Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems, Codebots, IBM, Blackbelt, DevBoost, NASA, Thales, Siemens, Raytheon, ATOS, Ergon, Talend, JC Chapman, Corpus Solutions and the Develop Group [5.8]. Epsilon is also used as a major component in several open-source projects, more than 40 of which are listed (with supporting evidence) under [5.9]. Components of Epsilon have also been used in the context of software modelling and model-based software engineering teaching in at least 15 higher education institutions worldwide [5.5].

As of December 2020, Epsilon’s user forum contains more than 9,700 questions and answers posted by users and developers of the project (more than 4,700 of which have been posted to the forum since August 2013), and is the 21^st largest forum (top 5%) among the 395 forums hosted by the Eclipse Foundation. The high-quality support that Epsilon’s development team provides to users through the project’s forum is recognised as an important contributor to Epsilon’s continued adoption and impact [5.6] (quotes #59 - #64).

Below are some examples of industrial uses of Epsilon. Quotes for the first three industrial uses of Epsilon (Codebots, Blackbelt and Leonardo) have been extracted from a report [5.6] commissioned by the University of York. The report was compiled by the independent consulting company Fresh Perspectiv after interviewing several industrial users of Epsilon. The report also contains supporting quotes from organisations such as IBM and Altran and from senior management at the Eclipse Foundation.

Examples of Industrial Value

“Epsilon has a positive impact on our revenue. The core of Codebots projects use Epsilon software. Through our products it also allows our clients to get their products quicker to market.” [5.6]

Epsilon is a core underpinning technology [5.6] (quote #22) of the commercial Codebots low-code software development platform ( http://codebots.com/), developed by the Codebots company in Brisbane, Australia (Codebots also has offices in London and Singapore). According to the CEO of Codebots, Epsilon reduces the technical debt and costs for the company’s customers [5.6] (quote #35) and allows them to ship their products to the market faster. The comprehensive support that Epsilon provides for domain-specific modelling, model validation and code generation also reduces the training effort for software developers in the company: “Epsilon pulls all the tools into one family. It simplifies the number of software tools I need to train my team on. Epsilon has the full gamut for us.” [5.6] (quote #40). Compared to competing offerings, Epsilon is seen to provide better support for type checking and functional decomposition, leading to “improved quality, reduced errors, and improved maintainability.” [5.6] (quote #54).

“Without Epsilon, this tool maybe wouldn’t exist” [5.6]

Epsilon is also a core technology of the commercial Judo enterprise software development platform ( https://www.judo.codes), developed by Blackbelt Technology in Hungary. According to Blackbelt’s lead architect, Epsilon is such a fundamental technology of Judo that without it the platform might not exist [5.6] (quote #19). Epsilon’s integrated nature has delivered substantial maintainability benefits for the company [5.6] (quote #18), and its openness, ease of use and versatility have also been highlighted [5.6] (quotes #43 and #65) as significant reasons for the adoption of Epsilon in the context of the Judo platform.

“[With Epsilon] we can produce more and better products in a shorter time.” [5.6]

At Leonardo UK ( https://uk.leonardocompany.com), Epsilon has been used since 2016 to produce software for aircraft-mounted systems which process positioning and sensor data [5.6] (quote #7). The solution developed using Epsilon “has proven much more robust and scalable than previous ones, has made it easier to check and compare intermediate models, and has allowed the correctness of the specification transcript to be maintained even as source and destination formats evolve” [5.10]. Epsilon increases productivity and reduces the cost of producing avionics products [5.6] (quote #25), by reducing the amount of code that developers need to write manually [5.6] (quote #52) thus increasing profit margin [5.6] (quote #17); the company estimates savings of GBP200,000 per annum as a result of this application of Epsilon [5.10]. The use of Epsilon is also seen as an improvement to the software engineers’ quality of life as it eliminates repetitive and dull work and allows engineers to spend more time on solving interesting problems [5.6] (quote #68).

At JC Chapman ( https://www.jcchapman.com), multiple components of Epsilon were used in 2015 to develop a platform for rigorous specification and automated translation of constrained natural language rules in the financial regulation domain (predominantly rules published by the Prudential Regulatory Authority of the Bank of England). This work was carried out in the context of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) co-funded by the company and Innovate UK. The Epsilon-based solution developed in the KTP was able to capture 97% of the regulatory rules it was evaluated against, with ~50% less code on average compared to SQL [5.7], leading to significant productivity and maintainability benefits for customers of the company.

At BAE Systems ( https://www.baesystems.com), Epsilon has been used since August 2013 (started from 2010) in the context of a model-based product for automated consistency checking of Tactical Data Link (TDL) specifications, that are used to specify the communication capabilities of defence platforms. The process of migrating from a document-based to a model-based development process using Epsilon, and the benefits realised from this transition were presented in a joint paper between academics at York and engineers at BAE Systems [5.2]. According to the engineers at BAE Systems [5.2] “the Epsilon language components serve to provide a parsimonious implementation of a complex domain” with the company estimating productivity benefits “of an order of magnitude, given similar skilled levels of practitioners”, which also extend into the maintenance phase of the product.

At Rolls-Royce ( https://www.rolls-royce.com), Epsilon has been used extensively since 2017 to support model-based engineering tasks such as model validation and model-to-text transformation in the context of an in-house domain-specific model-based engineering solution, CaMCOA Studio [5.3]. CaMCOA Studio will be used to architect and integrate the software for all future Rolls Royce engine control and monitoring systems [5.4]. In the absence of Epsilon, Rolls-Royce would have needed to use a mix of independently-developed and syntactically inconsistent languages, which would hinder reuse and increase development and maintenance costs. Epsilon is seen as an integral part of Rolls-Royce’s modelling toolkit and currently around 20 engineers in the company are using the tools and languages it provides. Professor Kolovos is the PI in an ongoing 3-year KTP with Rolls-Royce, co-funded by InnovateUK, to support further embedding of Epsilon technologies in CaMCOA Studio. According to the company, “… during the development of CaMCOA Studio, several process improvement events have shown a 96% reduction in the number of man-hours compared to the process CaMCOA Studio replaces. This could result in an initial cost avoidance figure of approximately GBP2,500,000 per annum when deployed” [5.4].