MDA and Software Factories

I just read some recent articles and literatures about the idea of “building software at a higher level (than raw source code)” such as MDA, software workbench, software factories, etc. It seems like people are starting or have started (e.g. tools like OptimalJ from Compuware) using models as an efficient way of building software and leave the complexity issues to automation (as much as possible). Also, it appears to me that domain specific languages might appear as the major programming languages for specific domains. Actually, lots of XML documents have been serving as configuration files, preferences and options for quite some time, those in some sense are DSLs too.

Here are some interesting projects and articles from Eclipse and VS.NET 2005:



1) EMF+GEF+GMF: those are the modeling frameworks in Eclipse. EMF is quite similar in spirit to MDA proposed by OMG, GEF provides the framework to write graphical editors for editing EMF models. GMF (http://www.eclipse.org/gmf/) is a newly proposed project that aims to add automatic generation of GEF editors for EMF models, which bridges the gap between EMF and GEF.

2) Other MDA-related projects at Eclipse: GMT (http://www.eclipse.org/gmt/) is a set of research tools for generative model transformation. This one seems quite interesting because we are thinking about model transformation as well for our wizard-based design tools.MDDi (http://www.eclipse.org/proposals/eclipse-mddi/index.html) seems quite intersting as well, but it is also in its infancy.

3) MS has been pushing about software modeling in VS.NET 2005 and there are ideas and tools about “software factotires” (http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/teamsystem/workshop/sf/default.aspx). They have a series of articles about software factories by Jack Greenfield. He also wrote a book (http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471202843.html).