Welcome to the DDMoRe Model Description Language (MDL) Community page.

This website will provide a resource for anyone wishing to encode models with MDL, will help you understand MDL structure and features and provides a place for you to log bugs, issues, feature requests and suggestions.

What is MDL?

MDL is a human writeable and human readable language designed to describe pharmacometric models. It is intended to be largely agnostic about the choice of target tool. MDL should facilitate clear and unambiguous definition of models, with information conveyed in a consistent manner to the PharmML representation and onwards to the target software specific code.

Where can I find details about writing models using MDL language and grammar?

The MDL User Guide and Reference Manual is available online in PDF format.

What tools are available for writing and editing MDL?

An MDL-Editor is available for download. This is a cross-platform, Eclipse-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for writing MDL models incorporating syntax highlighting and grammar checks. It is available for Windows (32 and 64bit), Linux (32 and 64bit) and Mac OS. Simply download the zip file and unzip to an appropriate location. An update site has been configured within Eclipse so that future updates to the MDL-Editor can be retrieved from within Eclipse without having to download another zip file.

The MDL Editor can be used to develop models using MDL and to export these models to PharmML, ready for upload to the DDMoRe repository: http://repository.ddmore.eu.

But what if I want to run the models?

At the ddmore.eu website you’ll also find instructions for downloading and installing the DDMoRe Interoperability Framework Standalone Execution Environment (SEE) demonstrator. The SEE installers are available from Sourceforge. The SEE is a DDMoRe demonstration product which includes R, NONMEM, Monolix, BUGS, PFIM, PopED, simulx (from the mlxR R package). The SEE is only available for Windows at present.

What resources are there to help me learn MDL and use the editor / SEE?

A YouTube playlist is available for videos detailing how to get started with the software.

A set of Use Case examples is provided with the SEE, which are also available on SourceForge.

What is coming on this website?

In the near future we hope to provide:

  • An online wiki format of the MDL User Guide and Reference Manual
  • Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
  • An issues log for capturing bugs, feature requests and suggestions for MDL
  • A walkthrough of the MDL Use Case examples explaining and annotating the code.

Authors and Contributors

Mike K Smith @MikeKSmith is the lead user for MDL. Stuart Moodie @stumoodie is the technical lead for MDL.

Support or Contact

Issues, bugs, feature requests, suggestions can be logged via the Github Issues page. Please label your item with “Website”, “MDL Language”, or “MDL-Editor” and the type of issue (“bug”,“enhancement”,“help wanted”,“invalid”,“question”) so that we can direct it to the right place for action.

Email contact information will be added very soon.

Acknowledgements

The research leading to these results has received support from the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking under grant agreement n° 115156, resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) and EFPIA companies’ in kind contribution. The DDMoRe project is also financially supported by contributions from Academic and SME partners.