ECMDA: Consistencia en el desarrollo de software conducido por modelos

La Conferencia Europea en Arquitectura Dirigida por Modelos (ECMDA) tendrá en Noviembre una reunión de trabajo enfocada en el análisis de la consistencia de modelos creados con UML, en el contexto de su uso para la generación automática de código:

A number of artefacts are produced during the software developments process and MDA in particular. Those artefacts are usually expressed in UML and should be related in different way to each other. One of the most important relationship between artefacts is that they should be consistent. Putting this question into the discussion and trying to find answer to this question is the main topic to be addressed during the workshop. (...)

The following issues fall within the scope of the workshop:

• Understanding consistency in the context of MDA and UML in particular – informal consistency from different points of views, static and dynamic consistency.

• Definition of consistency in MDA and UML – set of properties or other techniques,

• Checking consistency,

• Ensuring consistency,

• Model transformation preserving consistency,

• Practical realization,

• Tools support for checking and ensuring consistency,

• Relationship between consistency and formal techniques and languages,

• Consistency driven development process,

• Merging models and consistency (PIM + PM ->PSM).

El material de las reuniones previas de los años 2002, 2003, y 2004, se puede consultar a partir de ésta página (link en el título de esta nota).
Todo el material es de interés no sólo para abordar el propio problema convocante, sino para entender el uso de OCL, las operaciones de transformación de modelos, y los metamodelos en UML, y aún más en general, el uso de artefactos capaces de generar código.
Un tema que particularmente estimulante, es planteado por Robert Wagner, Holger Giese, y Ulrich Nickel, de la Universidad de Padeborn, Alemania; Flexibilidad en las reglas de consistencia aplicadas:

In most CASE tools, the consistency checks being performed are rather static and predefined as they are hard coded into the tool . Thus, new consistency rules neither can be added nor can existing consistency rules be adapted to special user, enterprise, project, target language, or domain specific demands. However, during large projects you will never obtain a complete set of rules covering all relevant inconsistencies. In fact, the set of consistency rules will be expanded and refined through the whole lifecycle of a project. Thus, for a tool developer it becomes infeasible to identify all consistency rules in advance.
In this paper we present a plug-in for a flexible and incremental consistency management realized within the FUJABA TOOL SUITE. FUJABA itself is an Open Source UML CASE tool project. It was started by the software engineering group at the University of Paderborn in fall 1997 and has a special focus on code generation from UML diagrams resulting in a visual programming language. Hence, consistency management was an important issue from the beginnings since consistent specifications are a required prerequisite for an error-free implementation.

Más sobre ECMDA.
Herramientas Comerciales y Open Source participantes. FUJABA.
Historial de conferencias sobre MDA de la asociación.