Distinguishing between automatic and manual aspects of model driven development

Manual portion and automatable aspects are often not explicitly differentiated and defined in most model driven software development (MDSD). This may hinder the advancement of the automation level of MDSD with problems such as defining the boundaries of automation tasks, and measuring the workload for model transformations (MT), etc. In common senses, the two parts are not distinguishable because they belong to irrespective subjective and objective conceptual areas respectively. By discussing this issue specifically for MDSD, a conceptual exclusion approach for differentiation based on an extended entity relationship (ER) model is proposed. A conceptual framework called MIB/CSD (manual work, inheritance, behaviorism/cardinality, static, dynamic) to implement the differentiation approach is designed. Feasibility of the differentiation work with regard to UML is discussed in both the theoretical aspect with the extended ER model and the practical aspect with some existing evidences