Software Mumbles and Grumbles

Those of you looking to step up your level of understanding regarding DSM and MDD should consider attending Software Architect 2008 in London, UK from 3-5 June. MetaCase’s CTO, Dr. Steven Kelly,  will be present a full-day pre-conference workshop on the 3rd entitled “Building Domain-Specific Modelling Languages with Full Code Generation“. The workshop is targeted at those with an intermediate or advanced understanding of DSM; architects and team leaders with an interest in model-based software development should seriously think of attending.

There will also be two additional presentations on the 5th if you are not able to attend the full-day workshop. Times and links to further information can be found on MetaCase’s website http://www.metacase.com/fairs.html .

I came across an interesting post from Jeffrey Ricker which offers and introductory discussion on MDD. Many of the benefits of MDD were well presented, but I had to disagree with the fundamental assertions that Eclipse is God’s gift to MDD.

Eclipse has helped increase the exposure and profile of MDD (there are a lot of Eclipse users), but it is far from being the best platform for MDD. The author justifies his view by broadly dismissing all proprietary MDD tools on the grounds that companies are not interested in proprietary tools. In my experience, companies are looking for the solution that offers them the best results/value and that they can depend on. There is no doubt that MetaEdit+ is technologically superior to any of the MDD tools offered for Eclipse, but that is my opinion. The proof is in the pudding, and if you look at the productivity and quality improvements achieved by MetaEdit+ customers, and compare that to Eclipse users, you’ll see why I am confident in making that statement.

On the other criteria, dependability, MetaEdit+ also has a striking advantage. Eclipse’s entry into the domain-specific modeling arena has been fairly recent, whereas MetaEdit+ has been used successfully since the early 90’s. Besides that, with MetaEdit+ there is a brilliant team of developers that are there to support customers every step of the way. With the ability to easily export all data to XML or to integrate with other tools via the SOAP based API, any residual fear that could potentially come from working with a proprietary tool are eliminated.

The European Conference on Model Driven Architecture Foundations and Applications (ECMDA 2008) will be held in Berlin from 09-12 June. This is the fourth year the conference, but this year seems to be blurring the line on the general-purpose vs. domain-specific positions.

MetaCase’s CEO has been invited to give a special, full-day tutorial on the benefits of Domain-Specific Modeling. It’s not what you might expect to hear at a conference on MDA, but I guess even the diehard MDA supporters recognize a good thing when they hear it… Just one more sign of the continuing decline in UML, and the rising influence of DSM.

Early bird pricing is available through Thursday, 15 May and will save you about 15% of the regular price.

Monday, 9 June 2008 (full day tutorial)

Domain-Specific Modeling for Full Code Generation

The 5th annual Software Engineering Today (SET) conference will begin tomorrow in Zurich, Switzerland. The 2-day event seems to address a wide variety of topics, from management issues to particular technologies, so I would expect the attendee profile to be quite mixed. Talks are offered in both German and English with 4 separate keynotes (plenty for a 2-day event) from Eric Evans, Stefan Arn, Naomi Karten, and Horst Zuse. MetaCase’s CEO will be giving a presentation on Tuesday which offers a roadmap on how to change to a MDD approach from manual coding. The weather should be sunny and warm (20°C / 68°F), so no excuses not to make the trip

Tuesday 6 May (14:00 - 14:45)
Moving from Coding to Model-Driven Development