Model-driven Development Environment Research Articles

Definition and evaluation of a COSMIC measurement procedure for sizing Web applications in a model-driven development environment

Context. Model-driven development approaches facilitate the production of Web applications. Among them, the Object-Oriented Hypermedia method (OO-H) has been successfully used for the development of industrial Web applications. Similarly to other development approaches, it is important also in this context to put measures in place to support project managers in resource allocation, cost and schedule control, and productivity monitoring.Objective. This motivated us to define a measurement procedure, named OO-HCFP, specifically conceived for OO-H Web applications based on COSMIC, a second-generation functional size measurement method.Method. We present mapping and measurement rules devised to automatically derive size measures from OO-H models. We also carry out an empirical study to evaluate whether our proposed measurement procedure, OO-HCFP, is useful for estimating the effort needed to realise industrial Web applications developed with OO-H.Results. The estimates obtained by using OO-HCFP are more accurate than those obtained by using other measurement approaches based on Function Points and design measures.Conclusions. The proposed approach can be profitably exploited to size Web applications developed with OO-H. Based on our experience, we also provide some guidelines to support the formulation of COSMIC measurement procedures for other model-driven approaches.

Formal semantics of OMG’s Interaction Flow Modeling Language (IFML) for mobile and rich-client application model driven development

Model Driven Engineering relies on the availability of software models and of development tools supporting the transition from models to code. The generation of code from models requires the unambiguous interpretation of the semantics of the modeling languages used to specify the application. This paper presents the formalization of the semantics of the Interaction Flow Modeling Language (IFML), a recent OMG MDA standard conceived for the specification of the front-end part of interactive applications. IFML constructs are mapped to equivalent structures of Place Chart Nets (PCN), which allows their precise interpretation. The defined semantic mapping is implemented in an online Model-driven development environment that enables the creation and inspection of PCNs from IFML, the analysis of the behavior of IFML specifications via PCN simulation, and the generation of code for mobile and web-based architectures.

Timing analysis tools in a model-driven development environment

This paper discusses the use of timing analysis tools on software systems developed with model-driven engineering methodologies. Model-driven development is mainly based on model transformations and automatic code generation. However, a deep understanding of the internal structure and behaviour of the automatically generated code is required in order to conduct later phases of the lifecycle, including validation of non-functional requirements such as real-time properties. The paper describes the integration of a timing analysis tool with TASTE, a model-driven environment developed under the auspices of the European Space Agency. A study of the influence of using an MDE approach on timing analysis techniques, along with figures on the proportion of automated and human-written code in a representative example of a spacecraft attitude control system is included in the paper.

DREMS ML: A wide spectrum architecture design language for distributed computing platforms

Complex sensing, processing and control applications running on distributed platforms are difficult to design, develop, analyze, integrate, deploy and operate, especially if resource constraints, fault tolerance and security issues are to be addressed. While technology exists today for engineering distributed, real-time component-based applications, many problems remain unsolved by existing tools. Model-driven development techniques are powerful, but there are very few existing and complete tool chains that offer an end-to-end solution to developers, from design to deployment. There is a need for an integrated model-driven development environment that addresses all phases of application lifecycle including design, development, verification, analysis, integration, deployment, operation and maintenance, with supporting automation in every phase. Arguably, a centerpiece of such a model-driven environment is the modeling language. To that end, this paper presents a wide-spectrum architecture design language called DREMS ML that itself is an integrated collection of individual domain-specific sub-languages. We claim that the language promotes “correct-by-construction” software development and integration by supporting each individual phase of the application lifecycle. Using a case study, we demonstrate how the design of DREMS ML impacts the development of embedded systems.

A Proposal to Elicit Usability Requirements within a Model-Driven Development Environment

Nowadays there are sound Model-Driven Development (MDD) methods that deal with functional requirements, but in general, usability is not considered from the early stages of the development. Analysts that work with MDD implement usability features manually once the code has been generated. This manual implementation contradicts the MDD paradigm and it may involve much rework. This paper proposes a method to elicit usability requirements at early stages of the software development process such a way non-experts at usability can use it. The approach consists of organizing several interface design guidelines and usability guidelines in a tree structure. These guidelines are shown to the analyst through questions that she/he must ask to the end-user. Answers to these questions mark the path throughout the tree structure. At the end of the process, the paper gathers all the answers of the end-user to obtain the set of usability requirements. If it represents usability requirements according to the conceptual models that compose the framework of a MDD method, these requirements can be the input for next steps of the software development process. The approach is validated with a laboratory demonstration.

MDD vs. traditional software development: A practitioner’s subjective perspective

ContextToday’s project managers have a myriad of methods to choose from for the development of software applications. However, they lack empirical data about the character of these methods in terms of usefulness, ease of use or compatibility, all of these being relevant variables to assess the developer’s intention to use them. ObjectiveTo compare three methods, each following a different paradigm (Model-Driven, Model-Based and Code-Centric) with respect to their adoption potential by junior software developers engaged in the development of the business layer of a Web 2.0 application. MethodWe have conducted a quasi-experiment with 26 graduate students of the University of Alicante. The application developed was a Social Network, which was organized around a fixed set of modules. Three of them, similar in complexity, were used for the experiment. Subjects were asked to use a different method for each module, and then to answer a questionnaire that gathered their perceptions during such use. ResultsThe results show that the Model-Driven method is regarded as the most useful, although it is also considered the least compatible with previous developers’ experiences. They also show that junior software developers feel comfortable with the use of models, and that they are likely to use them if the models are accompanied by a Model-Driven development environment. ConclusionsDespite their relatively low level of compatibility, Model-Driven development methods seem to show a great potential for adoption. That said, however, further experimentation is needed to make it possible to generalize the results to a different population, different methods, other languages and tools, different domains or different application sizes.

MROSE: To Determine Tool Selection and to Understand Model-Driven Software Evolution

interest in the model driven approaches has largely increased the number of tools into the model driven development environment. Previous research has shown that the stakeholders often do not use or know all of the tools available in the model evolution environment that they regularly use. The common solution to this problem is to provide a means to search through passive help documents. However, this approach requires a stakeholder to be able to express their desires in a form understood by search engine. So, choosing the right tool for MoDSE tasks has become difficult because of the diverse nature of numerous tools available. To overcome this limitation, this paper aims to present a prototypical recommendation system, named mROSE, to provide timely and useful recommendations to stakeholders. Two empirical studies were conducted to investigate if mROSE helps or hinders the stakeholders in MoDSE, if so under what conditions. First one was longitudinal user study and the second one was a laboratory user study. Performance of mROSE was also evaluated by using some of the existing metrics. These studies confirmed that mROSE can help stakeholders to choose right tools more efficiently and users liked the idea of having a recommendation system for MoDSE environment, like mROSE. These studies also revealed future directions that would improve the functionality of mROSE.

Model-driven systems development and integration environment

Telecommunications operators are undergoing massive transformations in order to metamorphose themselves into the ICT world and compete with agile, lean IT organisations. The main challenges facing telecommunications operators, such as BT, are to reduce costs and increase agility in deploying software systems for provisioning ICT services. Despite using reusable capabilities and COTS packages, the major source of increased cost lies in the heavy integration tax we incur for integrating diverse systems implemented on diverse platforms and middleware, with heterogeneous data and process models. This paper looks at cost implications of lengthy and often manual migration to-and-from systems and platforms, and shows the clear business benefits of model-driven development (MDD) as defined by the Object Management Group (OMG). It is clearly demonstrated that model-driven development has matured into a practical, industrialised, scalable and evolvable technology, culminating from decades of R&D on specification and design languages, executable formalisms and domainspecific languages and language transformations.

Instrumenting scenarios in a model-driven development environment

SpecExplorer is an integrated environment for model-driven development of .NET software. In this paper we discuss how scenarios can be described in SpecExplorer's modeling language, Spec#, and how the SpecExplorer tool can be used to validate those scenarios by various means.

Test-Driven Modeling for Model-Driven Development

A new software development process called test-driven modeling applies the Extreme Programming test-driven paradigm in a model-driven development environment. (The basis of this article is a project in Motorola's iDEN division that is extending and migrating a large legacy telecommunication system to new platforms using TDM.) This process involves automatic testing through simulation and using executable models as living software system architecture documents. In TDM, we use the same message sequence charts (MSCs) for both system analysis (or design documents) and unit test cases. Similarly, we use the same high-level modeling diagrams for both automatic code generation and living software architecture documents to guide the system's detailed implementation in later phases. Practical results show that developers can effectively apply TDM to large projects with high productivity and quality in terms of the number of code defects.