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Monthly Technology Briefs - October 2007

Technology trends occupying business minds: Model-Driven Architecture - Improving the Production of Software.

Why is Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) important?  Well, other than the obvious comment as to cutting costsand errors, it has an important, and some would say, key role to play in the shifting use of software. The term “agility” meaning the ability to make frequent changes incapabilities quickly is one aspect. The other is the introduction of SOA. Both rely on the ability to readily understand the process flow from the view point of a business manager with highly specific knowledge through the use of highly visual, conceptual diagrams with the intricacies of the actual software design being hidden. The business need for frequent changes (agility) allows these diagrams to be redrawn, as and when needed, but with the crucial difference that the changes are easily identified and made through the model in the software produced from the previous version of the model. As the requirement for agility is driven by the business requirement for differentiation, the time taken to implement the required changes through MDA is of great importance. As the role of software changes away from the internal use to capture commercial “transactions” through computer-centric applications towards an external/internal usefor “interactions” around people and content using Web 2.0 and SOA, MDA offers an improved approach towards providing what people want rather than what computers need.

Currently the use of MDA as a “standard” approach to the production of software is rising due to its obvious advantages, but in the longer termit seems likely it will lead to an even more fundamental shift in improving software production.

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