The Benefits of Model-Driven Development

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MDD in Modern Web-based Systems

X Analysis without compromise White Paper www.butlergroup.com
Written by: Michael Azoff
Published March 2008 All rights reserved. This publication, or any part of it, may not be reproduced or adapted, © Butler Direct Limited by any method whatsoever, without prior written Butler Direct Limited consent.
X EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Model Driven Development, CA Gen, and Mission-critical Applications
Model Driven Development (MDD) is the next step of abstraction in writing software applications. In the history of computing, each higher level of abstraction has offered improved productivity and ease-of-writing applications. This has enabled the creation of far more complex applications without increasing the project management work load, or conversely, building like-for-like applications faster, cheaper, and with higher quality, compared with lower-level techniques. Thus with MDD there is a separation of the model from the code, the user works on a platform independent model, selects the specific target platform, and the tool generates the code. Productivity is raised because the auto-generation takes care of all the plumbing code. There is also only a single language to use in building the model, the auto-generation will take care of SQL database calls, Java or .NET platform specific code, XML, and JavaScript for Web clients etc. This makes it easier to rapidly build applications and avoid the code testing cycle, as code is 100% generated. Naturally, testing still needs to be performed to test the design against the project requirements (and in mature testing environments the requirements are also tested). CA Gen is the MDD tool from CA that has a long history of successfully delivering applications: many of the early mainframe applications written in CA Gen are now benefiting from this choice of tool as models can remain unchanged and the code re-generated for newer, distributed computing platforms. The out-of-the-box model lifecycle management functionality means that best practice is in-built. For example the instant impact analysis feature ensures that the impact of changes is understood and leads to better model design. CA Gen has an easy-to-use business logic language that developers find robust and quick to pick up. The strongest case for CA Gen is made when there is a need to build mission-critical applications that will work first time. The development team sizes are small, even for the larger-scale projects, making development more agile and saving on human resource costs. There is benefit to the business in lower lifetime costs, as maintenance costs are relatively modest and CA Gen applications are less likely to fail. There is a move in IT towards Web-based applications and Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) and having already assisted numerous customers in making this architecture transition, CA is expanding its commitment to SOA with the next release of CA Gen r8. There is also a transition process in play to move the tooling to the Eclipse platform, with the option of launching Adobe Dreamweaver from the new CA Gen Studio. The CA Gen WebView project (an internal r8 project name) is also promising direct modelling of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) and Web services. Application development moves with the needs of business: to deliver faster to market, at lower costs, and on the latest infrastructures. CA Gen is addressing these issues by ensuring that if the user interface is not part of the model then it can integrate with other client-side solutions. Web services are playing a role in this respect and the next release will offer greater options. CA Gen deserves to be better known and increasing awareness should not be difficult for what is in my opinion a gem of a product. One way to achieve that is through its involvement with the MDD community, as it evolves its standards and tools: CA Gen is a good example of how to do MDD right.
2 CA - The Benefits of Model Driven Development © Butler Direct Limited www.butlergroup.com White Paper
X THE EVOLUTION OF APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT
Introduction
In the many years I have worked in IT I had never h... [download for more]