1 Timothy D. Korson [email protected] Model Driven Development: A New Symbiotic Relationship...

1Timothy D. [email protected]

Model Driven Development:A New Symbiotic Relationship Between Developers and Testers

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Copyright © 2006 Korson-Consulting

MDD 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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Blueprints to Buildings

VendorsOMG

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Poll #1

What background do you have with MDD?

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Natural Progression

00110111000011100 Assembler FORTRAN Ada Java Middleware Components … MDA

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State of Software Development Lots of advances, but

programmers still spend and inordinate amount of time on details that could be automated Distribution mechanisms GUI layout Database structure and access

mechanisms And there is still a huge

disconnect between requirements, architecture and code

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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: OMG’s Current Brainchild

Scope makes MDA Unique

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Family of OMG Standards MDA is 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.

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

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Current Problems in Software Development 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is out of date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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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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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 (for

example): 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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System testing still needed With MDA software developers

can generate far more code than with traditional techniques

Testers are already faced with more work than they can handle

How will testers keep up with MDA developers???

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If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them An automated test suite is a

software system So use MDA

UML testing profile(U2TP)

The models that developers use to generate the application are useful to the testersThis 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

There are only a handful of vendors that produce full fledged MDA tools. If you see a long list anywhere – it just isn’t correct

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Current Tools Don’t Always Generate All the Code

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They Do Generate 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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Poll #2

Will you consider using full code generation from a modeling tool which includes method bodies, for your project?

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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: A New Symbiotic Relationship...

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