Model Driven Architecture: The Evolution of Object-Oriented Systems?

Abstract

In an age in which some practitioners actually believe that the existence of ANGLE BRACKETS portends the solution to centuries-old philosophical problems in semantic representation, it is increasingly difficult to explain that systems evolve both from within (due to changes in requirements, growth, mergers & acquisitions, etc.) and without (new staff, new technologies, the ever-present “next best thing”). But evolve they do. Most “OO” vendors used to be “AI” vendors, and soon they’ll be “Model Driven” vendors. Consolidation in the modeling market this year will see to that. Because of the cost of evolution, software is expensive to build, and more expensive to maintain and integrate; worse, the moment it’s created it’s a legacy that must be integrated with everything else that comes afterward. Getting past this problem once and for all will require some way to move up a level to designs that allow implementation on many platforms, as implementation infrastructure changes. Modeling is an obvious way to move to a meta-design level, but nearly all modeling methods have focused primarily on the requirements analysis and software design stages of development-the tip of the iceberg. Model Driven Architecture (MDA) extends models to system implementation, long-term maintenance and most importantly integration of applications. In this session Dr. Soley will explain what the Model Driven Architecture Initiative is about, what the first products & deployments look like, and how the market will evolve.