An introduction to MDA

MDA presentation

Lai Duy Ha

Outline

Motivation

The MDA framework

Case study – triathlon project

Motivation

Boring code cause by:

Follow templates or coding style guide.

The consistent of the system.

The benefit of maintaining.

Disadvantage

Reduce inspiration of developers.

Silly copy/paste code.

Motivation

Example of one normal module:

Insert, update, delete record in one table.

Each field has its own validation.

Field’s presentation (type of control, row, column,….)

etc…

One system may contains more than 20+ modules like this

Motivation

My approach:

Using configuration data.

Validation.

Layout data.

Using template file & complier to generate code.

Motivation

Challenge

The change of configuration data’s structure over time.

Need to re-construct the structure of configuration data.

Outline

Motivation

The MDA framework

Case study – triathlon project

Overview about MDA

Model driven architecture: was launched by the OMG in 2001.

MDA development process

The artifacts are formal models (which can be understood by computers)

Models are the core at MDA

What is a model?

A model is always an abstraction of something that exists in reality.

A model is different from the thing it models, e.g., details are left out or its size is different.

A model can be used as an example to produce something that exists in reality.

A model is a description of (part of) a system

written in a well-defined language.

What is a model?

How the models are created?

Formally, they are based on a metamodel.

A metamodel is simply a model of a modeling language. It defines the structure, semantics, and constraints for a family of models.

How the models are created?

Because a metamodel is also a model, a metamodel itself must be written in a well-defined language. This language is called a metalanguage

Four-level metamodel hierarchy

Transformation

While the models can be considered as the core of MDA. The most important feature, that makes the MDA different from the traditional process, is the transformation.

There are two types of transformation:

Model 2 model:

QVT, ALT.

Model 2 code:

using template engine such as: Velocity, Acceleo, Xpand, ....

Transformation

A transformation definition is a set of transformation rules that together describe how a model in the source language can be transformed into a model in the target language.

The complete MDA framework

Outline

Motivation

The MDA framework

Case study – triathlon project

Case study

The sample project is the enterprise system, which is used to tracking in triathlon race.

Case study

System architecture:

In this case study, we only pay attention to the communication between client-server via restful service.

Generator project

Metamodel

Model editor

Template editor

Generate code

What’s next !!!

Buiding custom Domain Specific Language using Xtext.

Modeling Java Entrerprise System using mod4j.

References

Kleppe, A. G., J. Warmer, et al. 2003 MDA Explained: TheModel Driven Architecture: Practice and Promise, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc