mdeforge: an extensible web-based modeling platform
DESCRIPTION
Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) refers to the systematic use of models as first class entities throughout the software development life cycle. Over the last few years, many MDE technologies have been conceived for developing domain specific modeling languages, and for supporting a wide range of model management activities. However, existing modeling platforms neglect a number of important features that if missed reduce the acceptance and the relevance of MDE in industrial contexts, e.g., the possibility to search and reuse already developed modeling artifacts, and to adopt model management tools as a service. In this presentation we propose MDEForge a novel extensible Web-based modeling platform specifically conceived to foster a community-based modeling repository, which underpins the development, analysis and reuse of modeling artifacts.~Moreover, it enables the adoption of model management tools as software-as-a-service that can be remotely used without overwhelming the users with intricate and error-prone installation and configuration procedures.TRANSCRIPT
Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Scienze
Università degli Studi dell’Aquila
dell’Informazione e Matematica
MDEForge: an extensible
Web-based modeling platform
Francesco Basciani
Juri Di Rocco
Davide Di Ruscio
Amleto Di Salle
Ludovico Iovino
Alfonso Pierantonio
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
2Introduction
Over the last decades many MDE technologies have
been conceived to support a wide range of modeling
and model management activities
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
3Challenges
• A wider adoption of MDE technologies is still an
issue*
* Whittle, J., Hutchinson, J., Rouncefield, M., Burden, H., Heldal, R.: Industrial Adoption of Model-Driven Engineering: Are the Tools Really the Problem? In: MODELS. Volume 8107 of LNCS. Springer Berlin Heidelberg (2013) 1–17
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
4Challenges
• A wider adoption of MDE technologies is still an
issue
• Discovery and reuse of existing modeling
artefacts is very limited
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
5Challenges
• A wider adoption of MDE technologies is still an
issue
• Discovery and reuse of existing modeling
artefacts is very limited
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
6Challenges
• A wider adoption of MDE technologies is still an
issue*
• Discovery and reuse of existing modeling
artefacts is very limited
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
7Challenges
• A wider adoption of MDE technologies is still an
issue*
• Discovery and reuse of existing modeling
artefacts is very limited
• Modelling and model management tools are
distributed as software packages that need to be
downloaded and installed
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
8Challenges
• A wider adoption of MDE technologies is still an
issue*
• Discovery and reuse of existing modeling
artefacts is very limited
• Modelling and model management tools are
distributed as software packages that need to be
downloaded and installed
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
9Some tools providing storage features…
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10
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
11…we need more
An extensible platform that permits to
• store and manage any kind of modeling artefacts
and tools
• use model management tools as software as a
service
• Modeling as a Service (MaaS) initiative*
*Hugo Bruneliere, Jordi Cabot and Frédéric Jouault, Combining Model-Driven Engineering and Cloud Computing. MDA4ServiceCloud'10 (ECMFA 2010)
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
12MDEForge
• Community-based repository of modeling artifacts
• It enables the adoption of model management
tools as software as a service
• It is modular and extensible
• It will support advanced mechanisms to query the
repository and find the required modeling artifacts
The platform is at its early stages
http://www.mdeforge.org/
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
13MDEForge users
• Developers of modeling artifacts: communities
of users that might want to share their tools and
enable their adoption and refinement by other
users
• Developers of MDEForge extensions:
experienced users might contribute by proposing
new extensions to be included in the platform
• End-users: By means of the Web access and the
REST API the platform enables end-users to
search and use (meta)models, transformations,
and editors available in the repository
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
14MDEForge architecture
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
15The MDEForge Repository
Repository metamodel fragment
Simple repository content
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16The MDEForge Core
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17
Examples of MDEForge extensions
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18Automated chaining of model transformations
Problem
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
19Automated chaining of model transformations
Solution: chaining process
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
20Automated chaining of model transformations
Solution: representation of the related artifacts
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
21Automated chaining of model transformations
Solution: developed MDEForge extension
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
22Measuring metamodels
• Understanding typical metamodel characteristics
• Different metrics applied on a corpus of more than
450 metamodels have been correlated
• to measure metamodeling aspects that modelers
typically use
• abstraction, inheritance, composition, …
• to reveal what are the common characteristics that can
increase the complexity of metamodels
J. Di Rocco, D. Di Ruscio, L. Iovino and A. Pierantonio, Mining metrics for understanding metamodelcharacteristics, in: ICSE 2014 Workshop on Modeling in Software Engineering (MiSE 2014), Hyderabad, India, 2014
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
23Measuring metamodels
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
24Measuring metamodels
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
25Measuring metamodels
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
26Public and Private
MDEForge installations
Public MDEForge
Private MDEForge 1 Private MDEForge n…..
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
27Conclusion and future works
• Lack of reusability during model-driven engineering (e.g., creating a DSL from scratch)
• Need to install and configure desktop-based applications to perform MDE development activities
• MDEForge has been proposed as an extensible modeling platform supporting the creation of a community-based modeling repository
• core services that can be extended and all of them are remotely available as software as a service
• users are not overwhelmed with intricate and error-prone installation and configuration procedures
CloudMDE2014 – 30 SEPT 2014, Valencia, Spain
28Conclusion and future works
We want to:
• investigate how to support advanced queries of
the repository
• manage public and private installations of the
MDEForge
• investigate issues that are typical in Cloud
computing, e.g., scalability of the platform, and
workload management
• deal with licensing issues
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