Modeling

Going Skyway: Using Eclipse, modeling and Spring MVC

Surprisingly, perhaps, modeling has been somewhat downplayed among application development teams pursuing JEE apps – that is probably even more true in Spring-style development. But modeling can be a means to help achieve well-formed, reusable services. Some call that ”SOA.”

Among offerings in this area is Skyway Builder. We had a chance to talk with the company recently. The Skyway Eclipse-based software provides a model-driven approach to JEE application development. Moreover, it supports the much-discussed light-weight aspect-oriented Spring Framework.

Early in the year, the company forged a deal with IBM, integrating its Skyway Builder Enterprise Edition with IBM’s Rational Software Architect, Rational Software Modeler, and Rational Application Developer (RAD). While IBM’s efforts are naturally centered on WebSphere, it is notable that this pact gives the IBM developer an entre to Spring.

Skyway Builder with IBM Rational Software Architect 7.5.1 can help teams mover UML into working Spring. That includes Spring MVC scaffolding capabilities that allow users to generate a Spring apps.
“Rather then hand-code everything we create a model-based approach, said Sean Walsh, President and CEO, Skyway.” The software, he said, also allows developers to do ‘scaffolding’ as a starting point for development. That means creating patterns based on developer inputs, then generating code that can be used or customized. Scaffolding has proved very popular among Ruby-on-Rails advocates.

Related Skyway scaffolding info
Skyway Builder 6.3 Feature Preview – #1 Enhanced Spring MVC Scaffolding - Skyway Team Blog

What are the principles of code generation?

By Rob Barry, News Writer

What can help code generation succeed? Says Skyway’s Jack Kennedy,  code generation tools must offer options for post-generation changes. They must support round tripping, intelligent merging, user editable dependency injections, and more, he says. Check it out.

Also check out the discussion of Kennedy’s Top 10 principles for code generation  on TheServerSide.com. There is good give and take there.

While useful in getting large amounts of work done in a relatively short time, code generation does have its issues. It is sometimes far from popular with the rank-and-file developer corps. Some argue that this practice just reassigns a bulk of the human workload from writing code to configuring. What do you think?

How Green was my SOA?

As part of a large company-wide drive, IBM even promotes SOA as a play in the area of Green (energy-saving) computing. The company just released a so-called SOA Sandbox project online trial that provides instructions for building an app that provides energy usage information to end-users. Various IBM modeling tools can be used in such initiatives. We recently discussed other issues of enterprise architecture, and how it can serve in varying SOA capacities. It’s a little ditty with charming title, ”On establishing the link between the business and SOA with modeling.”

SoaML targets top-down, bottom up or meet-in-the-middle modeling

Signs are beginning to appear pointing the way to SoaML, an OMG-backed specification meant to bring a new type of modeling capability to the service-oriented world.

SoaML’s goal is to provide SOA modeling of services within UML, without making changes to UML. As part of that, the spec seeks to support services architectures where different parties use multiple services and where services can be defined to contain other services. Mappings to business process specs are also in store, notably BPDM and BPMN.

Anyone concerned about an over-bearing top-down modeling regimen in SoaML can take heart in its claimed adherence to either top-down, bottom up or meet-in-the-middle modeling.

The SoaML has been percolating for awhile, with more details due in 2009. Just recently, a wiki of sorts has been formed for all things SoaML. A complete working doc is available as a PDF from OMG. And for the over-the-top would-be SoaML enthusiast there is a background feature on the making of the SoaML logo on the Yaya-Colour blog.

SOA meets Cloud Computing at Microsoft PDC

For Microsoft there seemed to be a somewhat humbler tone at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles this past week. Even the biggest new SOA modeling and Cloud Computing initiatives were described as “nascent” works in progress and subject to change.
Continued »

Microsoft’s muddled modeling: Getting the ducks in line

Microsoft basically has a sturdy place in the enterprise, but its role just now is very fluid. Of course, its Windows servers have been in the enterprise a long time, and its tools are very prevalent. But its success with desktop-based developer tools is only slowly converting to success with server-based developer tools, and this is due in some part to a a muddled modeling strategy. Continued »

Inside Architecture on unified frameworks

Microsoft Nick Malik recently blogged on “Inside Architecture” about features that would have to be included in a comprehensive framework for enterprise architecture.

There would have to more communication and sharing between models, he writes. A published taxonomy is another recommendation that would particularly benefit smaller businesses.

Like most MSDN blogs this comes with a disclaimer. This is not the corporate line, necessarily. But, with the company’s moves toward OSLO model unification, Malik’s thinking on EA may have special interest.

Bill Gates shakes up SOA - Oslo embraces UML

It hasn’t received much attention in SOA circles yet, but last week Bill Gates broke what might be the biggest news Microsoft has made in the SOA space since the debut of .NET.

At the TechEd conference in Orlando, Fla. he announced Oslo, Microsoft’s SOA modeling project, will incorporate UML. It was also revealed that Visual Studio 10 will feature UML support. At first blush that may not sound like a big deal. After all, it’s just Microsoft embracing a popular standard modeling language.

Yet Oslo is Microsoft’s Hail Mary pass over the rest of the SOA market and apparently the company has decided to end its religious differences with UML for the sake of giving Oslo mass appeal. Previously Microsoft had been pushing domain specific languages (DSLs) as an alternative to the general purpose format of UML. Unfortunately for the folks in Redmond, DSLs have failed to gain much traction. Part of the problem is getting the people who form a domain to agree upon a standard syntax. Another part is having that DSL interact with anything outside of its domain. Those things surely will come with the march of time, but the uptake has been painfully slow.

SOA demands some commonality, that everyone stop trying to be so special and idiosyncratic. Microsoft has always understood that on some levels, but it’s got skin in the proprietary software business (actually it’s got skin, blood, muscle, bone, you name it). Its maverick tendencies have often led to it offering users products that do SOA the Microsoft way. That is in stark contrasts to the company’s Web services tooling, which has for the most part embraced open standards and heterogeneous systems (most notably Windows Communication Foundation). This is where I remind some readers out there that, yes, there truly is a difference between SOA and Web services.

In fact, one way to look at Oslo, which supposedly will offer a Community Technical Preview in September, is that this is Microsoft’s flag in the ground for SOA. It emphasizes the importance of modeling, attempting to bring the technology as close as possible to the business. As such, UML represents an excellent choice. It should create interoperability between Oslo projects and those built with rival modeling tools (e.g. IBM Rational). And Eclipse’s Modeling Development Tools Project will have a UML2 component ready by the end of the month.

UML gives Oslo a reach it never would have had if it were based on a proprietary modeling language. The UML foundation means Oslo stands a chance of being truly universal, which is as SOA a concept as you can get. It also puts pressure on the vendors backing Service Component Architecture. Has Microsoft managed to leapfrog them in terms of offering a general purpose SOA modeling platform? Or perhaps could this lead to Microsoft embracing SCA at some level, perhaps via Apache Tuscany?

With this UML announcement, Oslo suddenly ranks as a potentially powerful new addition to the SOA space. Nice to see that Bill Gates can still shake things up, even as he prepares to step down as full-time chairman of Microsoft.

Business process modeling: What’s in a word?

Defining your terms makes a world of difference when a project manager is modeling a business process, says Debra Berard, program manager for business excellence, Lean/Six Sigma at Seagate Technology LLC.

The bugaboo that also haunts data integration projects — you say “bill,” I say “invoice” — is something project managers need to solve in business process modeling for application development.

A recent example  Berard offered was the design of Seagate’s failure analysis common tracking system (FACTS) application, which is used to find the root cause of failures in product design or manufacturing so they can quickly be corrected.

In a competitive business like disk drive manufacture the quicker a failure can be remedied, the quicker a new product gets to market.

To develop the FACTS application required WebEx meetings and conference calls with stakeholders from all the Seagate facilities involved including manufacturing sites in Thailand, China, Malaysia, and Singapore, as well as design centers in Oklahoma City, Minneapolis, and Singapore.

During these meetings, the project manager captured the processes that existed in the various locations using a business process modeling and analysis tool, the newly released Metastorm ProVision 6.1  enterprise modeling product.

The first thing the analyis revealed was the while Seagate’s goal was to have one failure analysis process, there were approximately 25 to 30 different processes in the company.

But after further review, that wasn’t as bad as it first looked.

“Come to find out, we did have a lot of processes,” Berard said. “but what was revealed was that they were really doing the same process, but calling the activities different names.”

So the issue was resolved in the conference calls by getting all the stakeholders around the world to agree to call the failure analysis activites by the same set of names, she said.

Once that was done a common model for FACTS was created, which then became the requirements document for the $5 million application development project.

Now, everybody involved in failure analysis at Seagate uses the same terminology as well as the same Web-based FACTS application.

Deadline extended for SearchSOA.com products of the year

Last week we got flooded with requests to extend the deadline for our Products of the Year Awards submissions. Normally we’d have taken a “no soup for you” stance on this, but when the requests topped the dozen mark we figured we should grant an extension.

Now you’ve got until February 15 to fill out the nomination form. It will push back the announcement of winners until March, but we believe this will be the most comprehensive set of awards handed out in the SOA space and we wanted to make sure absolutely everyone gets a chance to submit.

For those of you who don’t know, we have eight categories:

1. Service design and modeling (including BPM)
2. Service assembly and integration (ESB, orchestration)
3. Service performance (testing, QA)
4. SOA runtime management
5. Data services/integration (including BI)
6. SOA security
7. SOA governance (including registry/repository)
8. Composite application assembly (portal, Ajax, RIA)

Products need to have been released between Dec. 1, 2006 and Nov. 30, 2007. You can check the nomination form for more details, though we highly recommend you explain how the product enables SOA and adheres to the principles of service orientation in your entry.