Model-Driven Software Development: Technology, Engineering, Management

Chapter 3

Case Study: A Typical Web Application

After we have established the foundations for MDSD in general, and Architecture-Centric, Model-Driven Software Development (AC-MDSD) in particular, we can now proceed to a hands-on case study to familiarize ourselves with AC-MDSD in practice.

3.1 Application Development

First, we assume the application developer’s position and presuppose the existence of a generative software architecture, as described in Section 2.5. This will typically be created iteratively and incrementally in parallel with application development. We will discuss the methodology required for this purpose in greater detail in Chapter 13.

We should mention that this is a role-based view. However, we will not say anything about the allocation of roles to people yet, since this is a matter of project organization, which is covered in Chapter 19. Here we focus primarily on categorizing the various activities to help an understanding of the subject matter. Based on an example application, we explain the most important steps, then proceed to describe the relationship between application development and the generative architecture.

An iteration in application development begins with the creation or extension of an application design, in this example using a UML tool. The application design’s XMI¹ representation, exported from the UML tool, is transformed into an implementation skeleton via an MDSD generator. The actual business logic is programmed manually and integrated ...