Structuring very large domain models: Experiences from industrial MDSD projects

View/Viewpoint approaches like IEEE 1471-2000, or Kruchten's 4+1-view model are used to structure software architectures at a high level of granularity. While research has focused on architectural languages and with consistency between multiple views, practical questions such as the structuring at a lower level of detail have not been dealt with. This paper aims at filling this gap by reporting personal experiences from a very large scale industrial domain modeling project. There, structuring the logical view turned out to be a critical success factor. We explain the project and its setting, analyze the role and repercussions of model structuring, and examine the implications model structuring decisions have on other parts of the project. We then explain the model structure abstracted from a very large scale industrial modeling project. Finally, we discuss lessons learned.