The project Open Software Factory [3] (aka openmodelerp) is an ongoing process to develop a set of tools and a corresponding set of methods for effective Model-Driven Software Development (MDSD).
Abstraction is fundamental to software development. Abstractions are provided by models. Modeling and model transformation constitute the core of MDSD. Models can be refined and finally be transformed into a technical implementation, i.e., a software system.
This talk will begin with a quick overview of basic MDSD concepts. The remainder of the talk will discuss how the Open Software Factory supports MDSD. We will summarize our current achievements and briefly outline our plans for the future. The talk will share our project's experience in both developing Open Software Factory and applying it to develop to simple 2 Demonstration applications. The following issues will be briefly mentioned in the talk.
- The apparent productivity gains of using OSF and the MDSD paradigm in general.
- The benefits of using OSF to make models more abstract, independent of their implementation.
- The efficient re-targeting of an application model to a new platform.
- The automation of repetitive parts of software development that are inherent when using current infrastructures (J2EE, Struts, Spring, Hibernate, JSF, etc ...).
- Combining the use of OSF with best practices of Agile Software Development and the resulting synergy.
- Implications for other development tools such as NetBeans to support MDSD.
- Current challenges for the Java Open Source community to have a complete toolchain to support MDSD, not tied to any specific vendor.
