Generating Enterprise Applications from Models

Abstract

For developing large and complex applications, industrial practice uses a combination of non-formal notations and methods. Different notations are used to specify the properties of different aspects of an application and these specifications are transformed into their corresponding implementations through the steps of a development process. The development process relies heavily on manual verification to ensure the different pieces integrate into a consistent whole. This is an expensive and error prone process. We present a set of notations for specifying the different layers of a software architecture and a method for transforming a specification into an implementation. Models defined using these different notations are instances of a single meta model. This provides a means to unify the specifications of different layers and leads to a simple and elegant implementation method. The method has been used extensively to construct medium and large-scale enterprise applications.