Software factory + DSL: Microsoft's answer to MDA

Software factory + DSL: Microsoft's answer to MDA

Stephen swoyer

[2004/12/1] Two years ago, OMG launched MDA and used UML to automate software integration from applications, middleware, or custom components. Thomas Murphy, vice president of the Meta Group, a consultancy, believes that, to some extent, the concept of a software factory and a domain specific language (DSL) associated with it, is Microsoft's response to MDA. "MDA is an OMG software factory. Microsoft's goal is the DSL field, so many things are built on the value of the different perspectives of observation and modeling and the operation of things (view). "So what does Microsoft think of a DSL? Keith short, architect of the Microsoft Enterprise framework and Tool Group, points out that many developers are already working on DSL-although they do not know. "SQL is a DSL that we use very well." Keith explains that developers do not need to know how relational databases work when using SQL. Okay, so what does this have to do with the concept of a software factory? For beginners, Microsoft uses the software factory as a way to automate some manual tasks and encapsulate domain knowledge. For example, domain knowledge can be encapsulated as code or component and can be easily reused. Short believes that this is the purpose of DSL design: From the Perspective of developers, DSL can help abstract the complexity of a specific field (such as architecture, process, technical standards, etc ). For example, Web services are complex, requiring developers to know which services are available and how to connect them. Short pointed out that "Imagine you can abstract these to a DSL, which is a tool that focuses on specific development environments ". Like web services, SQL is the result of standardization efforts over the years. Microsoft and other developers are obligated to develop tools to help developers create their own DSL. Short said, "One of the things we need to do to achieve the ideal scenario is to help designers simply build DSL and implement them ......" The software giant issued a DSL appeal at the oopsl conference in September and launched a new tool set to help developers Define and edit DSL in a graphical environment. Short points out that the idea behind this toolset is to make "the software factory creator can easily describe the interaction between things, such as between source code and schema ." Microsoft's actions have attracted the attention of developers, even programmers like Michael Hudson who once dismissed Microsoft's technology. Hudson is a programmer and J2EE expert at Praxis. He believes DSL is the most powerful idea in Microsoft's software factory. However, he believes that many ideas are borrowed from other technologies such as xde. Xde is a rad tool that rational supports the MDA method. Hudson said, "I think they have found the right key: High-level modeling must be described in a specific domain language. You can get the business logic of the domain you are facing faster, and the development process is faster and more effective. I think the software factory concept should be successful because of DSL innovation ." Developers can encapsulate their experiences in DSL, which is completely possible. This is actually a more or less abstraction of their work. But Thomas Murphy believes this will not happen. "We have been pushing this concept for a long time: simplifying software development through abstraction so that everyone can develop software. However, in the future, a large number of creative developers will be required to develop components and design at the forefront of software development ". (Excerpted from adtmag and umlchina yuan Feng. It cannot be reproduced for commercial purposes)