1 timothy d. korson [email protected] model driven development: hype or reality

1Timothy D. [email protected]

Model Driven Development:Hype or Reality

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Copyright © 2005 Korson-Consulting

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MDA Premise

Generate systems from models

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Blueprints to Buildings

It is like having a team of Robots that could automatically construct a building from a detailed set of blueprints

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Natural Progression

00110111000011100 Assembler FORTRAN Ada Middleware Components … MDA

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State of Software Development Lots of advances, but

programmers still spend and inordinate amount of time Distribution mechanisms GUI layout Database structure and access

mechanisms

Details that logically could be automated

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Corporate Architecture

multiple industry standards-CORBA, EJB/J2EE, .NET, XML/SOAP, These become “MDA compiler

options” instead of “Bet the Company” decisions

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MDA BenefitsAccording to the OMG:

“the benefits of MDA are significant - to business leaders and developers alike:

Reduced cost throughout the application life-cycle Reduced development time for new applications Improved application quality Increased return on technology investments Rapid inclusion of emerging technology benefits into

their existing systems

MDA provides a solid framework that frees system infrastructures to evolve in response to a never-ending parade of platforms, while preserving and leveraging existing technology investments. It enables system integration strategies that are better, faster and cheaper.”

Better

Faster

Cheaper

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Scope Makes MDA Unique

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MDA GoalsMDA addresses the challenges of today's highly networked, constantly changing systems environment, providing an architecture that assures:

Portability, increasing application re-use and reducing the cost and complexity of application development and management, now and into the future.

Cross-platform Interoperability, using rigorous methods to guarantee that standards based on multiple implementation technologies all implement identical business functions.

Platform Independence, greatly reducing the time, cost and complexity associated with re-targeting applications for different platforms-including those yet to be introduced.

Domain Specificity, through Domain-specific models that enable rapid implementation of new, industry-specific applications over diverse platforms.

Productivity, by allowing developers, designers and system administrators to use languages and concepts they are comfortable with, while allowing seamless communication and integration across the teams.

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MDABasic Technical Concepts

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Traditional Software Development Requirements

Mostly text Analysis

Diagrams and text Design

Diagrams and text Coding

code Deployment

executables

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Problems

Portability/new technologies Rapid pace of change

Interoperability Maintenance and documentation

Lack of documentation Any documentation one does have

is out of date

Too much overhead

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MDA Process

Business Analysis Use Cases Computation

Independent ModelSystems Definition

Platform Independent Model

Design Transformation Platform

Specific ModelCode Transformation

codeDeployment

executables

TransformationTool

TransformationTool

Business Analysis

Systems Definition

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Traditional Roles mapped to MDA

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MDA Benefits Productivity

Automated transformation tools Portability

Multiple PSMs for a given PIM Interoperability

PSM bridges Maintenance and Documentation

Maintenance is done directly on the models so the Models cannot get out of sync with the code.

The models are no longer overhead

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MDA Advantages

1. The business logic for PIMs can be developed, and validated, by business analysts with little or no technical background. Some MDA tools even let you “run” a PIM on a virtual machine to test it.

2. There is full traceability from PIM through PSM and the ultimate deployed software. This provides a great deal of quality assurance.

3. Subsequent changes in either the business model or the technology platform can be gracefully accommodated. Changes in the technology don’t require changes to the PIM. Changes to the PIM can be traced to determine their likely impact on the PSM and ultimate deployed implementation.

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MDA Framework MDA already has been applied to all

kinds of business problems and integrated with a wide array of other common computing technologies.

Because of its broad applicability, MDA itself is not packaged as a single standard like UML. MDA is more like an umbrella over a

growing family of standards that now includes the UML V2.0, the Meta Object Facility (MOF), the Common Warehousing Model, and the Software Process Engineering Metamodel (SPEM), among others.

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MDD

Model Driven Development is a more generic term that includes approaches that do not adhere to the MDA standards

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MDAImplications

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Thoughtful Cost Benefit Analysis Required What process is used for building

A dog house A garage A house A business park A skyscraper

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Just build it It might cost more to create a

detailed blueprint for a dog house than carpenter would charge for labor and materials for the entire construction

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On the Other Hand

For complex applications which have to have detailed blueprints anyway

The value of MDA can be substantial

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Not Your Father’s UML

Most UML modeling tools generate code One UML class – one Java class

MDA tools are model-driven, pattern-based One UML class – many code

artifacts

MDA tools intelligently generate infrastructure from models

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From a Customer Class in UML A good MDA tool can generate:

The appropriate Data definition language to create, delete, and init the RDBMS table.

A Data Access Object or Enterprise JavaBeans data access layer

A SessionFacade to access the bean A ServiceLocator to find the bean A set of Data Transfer Objects to pass to

the web tier A Struts-based framework to perform

CRUD operations on a "Customer" All the security, logging, exception and

other hooks that one would expect to use

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Focus

Changes from Coding to Modeling Business analysts will not need IT

skills in order to stay involved in systems development from beginning to end

Geeks will focus on building the MDA transformation tools

Business applications will be build by analysts and architects skilled in modeling

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Agile MDA

Incremental techniques work well with MDA

Most XP practices such as “pair programming” extend naturally to MDA

The PIM replaces what “code” is to agile development teams

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Increased importance

Inspections CIM PIM

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Testing

Test cases can be generated from the same models that generate the code

A completely automated test suite is a software system So use MDA

UML testing profile(U2TP)

This will have a major impact on the skillsrequired of testers and thetest process itself.

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Generated Code Should be Bug Free Focus can be on testing business

logic rather than the middleware and other system code and interactions.

We assume the C compiler doesn’t introduce translation bugs into the assembly code Community at large

finds these errors

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MDA for Prototyping

RepeatModelGenerate prototype using MDAEvaluate prototype

Until stakeholders are happy with prototype

Build system using traditional techniques

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MDAHype versus Reality

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MDA Compliant

Vendors make MDA claims whenever their tool implements one of the many standards in the MDA family of standards

This is misleading An MDA environment should be

able to turn a PIM into a running system

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Current Tools

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Current Tools Don’t Generate All the Code

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Just the Messy Error Prone CodeGenerated

Middleware Business objects Data Base stuff Objects and method stubs Default GUI

Typically Not Generated Customization to the GUI Method Bodies for the

Business algorithms

TransformationTool

TransformationTool

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Two step Process

TransformationTool

TransformationTool

Most of the development

Certain architectural configurationand GUI customization

Custom business logic

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Controlled Study

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Case Study Conclusions

35% gain in development productivity

Up to 70% gains in maintenance productivity

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MDAFinal thought

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Impact on Outsourcing?

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MDA - An Alternative to Offshore Outsourcing?

Roger Lane, Managing Director,Interactive Objects Software

The off-shore outsourcing trend is gathering momentum. Business and IT management see off-shore as a way of making their hard pressed IT budgets go further. Organizations who have successfully used outsourcing say it is not only about cost, but about better quality. In truth, a high proportion of off-shore projects fail to meet expectations on cost or quality and an alarming number fail. MDA has the potential to offer significant productivity and quality gains. Could it be that MDA is a viable alternative to sending development off-shore ? This presentation examines how MDA stacks up against the off-shore model and the potential additional advantages it can bring to organizations and their staff.

9 - 10th March, New Connaught Rooms, London

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Crystal Ball MDA is not the only game in town.

Neither the problems that plague the software industry, nor the principles of good software engineering are secrets known only to the MDA elite.

All the tool vendors out there are searching to find solutions that will win in the marketplace.

At the same time that MDA environments are starting to mature, IDEs are becoming more and more powerful and multi-use components more widespread.

My personal opinion is that both the IDE style programming approach and the MDA style modeling approach will exist side by side during the next decade. MDA will not take over the application development

space, but it will play an important role there. Two of the biggest risks to the future of MDA are:

Will the development community be patient with MDA while the MDA tools mature, and

Will the OMG find the “right” way to specify business logic at the PIM level in a timely manner.

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Conclusions MDA is a natural step in raising the level of

abstraction at which we develop systems. MDA embodies the basic engineering concept

of separation of concerns. It is clear both intuitively and anecdotally that

MDA can lead to important gains in productivity, portability, and the ability to focus on business functionality as opposed to technology details.

Most importantly, MDA is not a proprietary vendor initiative, but is a technology enabled by a family of standards developed by the OMG consortia of computing users and vendors.

The implications to testers of a move to MDA style development are especially significant.

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Thank you for attending

Please feel free to contact me with any follow up questions or comments

Timothy [email protected]

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1 timothy d. korson [email protected] model driven development: hype or reality

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