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Incorporating UIDLs into Model-Driven Development

Xiaoping Jia, Adam Steele


Abstract

In Model-Driven Development (MDD) the focus in on defining an abstract model of the program rather than the program's code. MDD has the potential to deliver greater cost savings to software developers by automating much of the most time-consuming and error-prone aspects of software development including code-generation and testing. However, there are obstacles to realizing the full benefits of MDD. The most critical of these is that current modeling notations are incomplete in that they do not support important aspects of the program such as the user interface (UI) and extra functional requirements (XFRs). We propose set of formal notations to describe a loosely coupled model of three aspects of an application (structural, behavioral, and UI) and an event-based framework to tie the model together. We will also develop knowledge-based tools to automate the compilation of the model. The key to our approach is capturing a human expert's knowledge of software architecture and design principles, so that we can codify and represent this knowledge in automated model compilation tools.
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