Coding-free Model-Driven enablement framework and engineering practices of a context-a ware SOA modeling environment

Abstract

The rapid adoption of Model-Driven Design (MDD) methodology in SOA-based solution design requires an adaptive tooling environment that can systematically improve designers' productivity. Ideally, the environment should be flexible enough to both handle frequently changing requirements and support new features without intensive coding efforts. In this paper, we provide a coding-free enablement framework to realize such extensible tooling environments based on a mathematical abstraction of key models in SOA solution design using graph theory definition. This abstraction formalizes the SOA modeling logic and semantics, and also guides the implementation of an extensible and customizable tooling environment. As a case study, we illustrate how our framework is able to transform the development style from Java programming to text editing through our implementation of a UML 2.0 based SOA modeling environment using IBM's Rational Software Architect (RSA) development platform. © 2008 IEEE.