John Edward Hutchinson

Empirical assessment of MDE in industry

This paper presents some initial results from a twelve-month empirical research study of model driven engineering (MDE). Using largely qualitative questionnaire and interview methods we investigate and document a range of technical, organizational and social factors that apparently influence organizational responses to MDE: specifically, its perception as a successful or unsuccessful organizational intervention. We then outline a range of lessons learned. Whilst, as with all qualitative research, these lessons should be interpreted with care, they should also be seen as providing a greater understanding of MDE practice in industry, as well as shedding light on the varied, and occasionally surprising, social, technical and organizational factors that affect success and failure. We conclude by suggesting how the next phase of the research will attempt to investigate some of these issues from a different angle and in greater depth.

The State of Practice in Model-Driven Engineering

Despite lively debate over the past decade on the benefits and drawbacks of model-driven engineering (MDE), there have been few industry-wide studies of MDE in practice. A new study that surveyed 450 MDE practitioners and performed in-depth interviews with 22 more suggests that although MDE might be more widespread than commonly believed, developers rarely use it to generate whole systems. Rather, they apply MDE to develop key parts of a system.

Industrial Adoption of Model-Driven Engineering: Are the Tools Really the Problem?

An oft-cited reason for lack of adoption of model-driven engineering MDE is poor tool support. However, studies have shown that adoption problems are as much to do with social and organizational factors as with tooling issues. This paper discusses the impact of tools on MDE adoption and places tooling within a broader organizational context. The paper revisits previous data on MDE adoption 19 in-depth interviews with MDE practitioners and re-analyzes the data through the specific lens of MDE tools. In addition, the paper presents new data 20 new interviews in two specific companies and analyzes it through the same lens. The key contribution of the paper is a taxonomy of tool-related considerations, based on industry data, which can be used to reflect on the tooling landscape as well as inform future research on MDE tools.

Viewpoints for Specifying Component-Based Systems

There is a conceptual gap between the way we currently articulate requirements and the reuse-driven paradigm embodied in component-based system development. The principal challenge in requirements engineering for component-based systems is to develop models and methods that allow us make the best use of the available component technology by balancing aspects of requirements and business concerns, with the architectural assumptions and capabilities embodied in blackbox software components. This paper proposes a method for requirements engineering based on the notion of viewpoints that provides an explicit framework for expressing component-based system requirements from initial formulation through to detailed specification.

A Faceted Approach to Service Specification

Service-centric computing is developing and maturing rapidly as a paradigm for developing distributed systems. In recent years there has been a rapid growth in the number and types of processes being proposed to support aspects of SOC. Many of these processes require that services be modelled in a particular way and this puts great pressure on traditional notions of service specification, questioning the very nature of how services should be described for potential consumers. We present a technique for addressing this theoretical and practical bottleneck: faceted service specification. This allows different specifications to exist side-by-side if they are needed, yet places little obligation on the service provider to support specifications that are judged to be of little or no value. We show how faceted service specification is being used in the SeCSE project to support advanced service-centric system development activities.

A service model for component-based development

The promise of component-based development - the development of large-scale applications from off-the-shelf software components - may remain elusive unless we complement the facilitating technologies with processes that are designed to take account - and advantage - of components right from the start. Blackbox components present a number of serious challenges whose impact may offset the potential benefits of their use unless they can be addressed successfully. We describe a process that makes use of a service-model to map user-requirements to components, and which offers support for some of the challenges posed: component-oriented requirements elicitation, negotiation, design, verification and change management. Our approach also supports a hybrid component/service-based development where off-the-shelf components and services can coexist in the same system.

Analysing the impact of change in COTS-Based systems

Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software components promise benefits in terms of greater productivity, reduced time to market and reliability. However, their blackbox nature poses significant challenges assessing and managing the impact of change. We propose an approach to help developers to understand the impact of change. It relies on the use of a COTS component-oriented development process and an architecture description language (ADL) for documenting component system architectures; both elements contributing to create a combined approach to impact analysis in COTS-based system.

A taxonomy of tool-related issues affecting the adoption of model-driven engineering

Although poor tool support is often blamed for the low uptake of model-driven engineering (MDE), recent studies have shown that adoption problems are as likely to be down to social and organizational factors as with tooling issues. This article discusses the impact of tools on MDE adoption and practice and does so while placing tooling within a broader organizational context. The article revisits previous data on MDE use in industry (19 in-depth interviews with MDE practitioners) and reanalyzes that data through the specific lens of MDE tools in an attempt to identify and categorize the issues that users had with the tools they adopted. In addition, the article presents new data: 20 new interviews in two specific companies—and analyzes it through the same lens. A key contribution of the paper is a loose taxonomy of tool-related considerations, based on empirical industry data, which can be used to reflect on the tooling landscape as well as inform future research on MDE tools.

Managing change in COTS-based systems

Traditional software engineering change management approaches are inadequate for addressing the unique challenges presented by the component-based systems. Current change management techniques view the system under development as a collection of mutable subcomponents, known to the developer and whose interrelationships and development histories are described in a change management system. This contrasts with a component-based view of a system comprising potentially many interconnected, immutable, black-box components. This contrast represents the fundamentally different change management tasks associated with component-based development. We propose a novel architecture-centric approach that combines a process model with a dedicated ADL to provide a framework for change impact analysis.

Mismatches between industry practice and teaching of model-driven software development

EAMDE was a 12 month research project, investigating how industry uses model-driven software development (MDSD). Using quantitative and qualitative research techniques, experiences were collected on the adoption and application of MDSD in 17 companies. The study highlighted examples of good and bad practice that lead to success or failure with MDSD. Some of these practices appear to have ramifications on the way that MDSD, and software modeling more generally, is taught within universities. This paper presents three of the key findings relevant to education: (1) A significant number of successful MDSD companies build their own modeling languages and generators, suggesting a re-orientation of education away from UML notation to fundamental modeling principles; (2) MDSD is generally taught top-down, whereas industry success is more likely when MDSD is applied bottom-up; (3) successful application of MDSD requires skills both in abstract modeling and compilers/optimization; however, these skills tend to be separated in standard CS curricula.