Models Architectures and Toos
The development and maintenance of technical software involves high cost and risk. Often a technical domain model outlives the software technology that implements it. Because technology cycles grow ever shorter, it is of huge importance to secure software’s embodied technical know-how in the form of data models in abstract, technology-independent form. Beyond documentation and specification of domain models, automatic generation of software for industry proves interesting in order to minimize long-range costs and to maintain a handle on further development and maintenance or a company’s own software systems.
Systematic refinement and verification of specifications and automatic generation of software from models enables the parallel use of different technologies and platforms without the costly and cumbersome reconstruction of the technical data model from a concrete technology-bound implementation. Similarly, it becomes easier to migrate existing software systems to new technologies and thus to enjoy the advantages of such new technology for future extensions, or to port existing software system to new environments (e.g., WWW, mobile end devices).
Abstract specification of a domain model permits further development and maintenance directly on the domain model in more comprehensible form. A model-based approach seems very promising because projection of the domain model onto a software technology is much simpler than backtracking from existing software to domain knowledge.
Models, Architectures and Tools (MAT) is committed to the long-range challenge of supporting companies in the development of their domain models from existing software products using methods and tools.
Keywords
Model-based software engineering, domain-specific languages, embedded and industrial software models, domain models, specification und verification.