MDA refinements along middleware-specific concern-dimensions
Raul Silaghi · 2004
Over the last decades, middleware has become an integral part in the development of distributed enterprise systems. Nevertheless, currently existing software engineering methods continue to have a strong focus on functional requirements, ignoring more or less nonfunctional concerns, such as middleware-specific concerns, which have to be addressed sooner or later when designing and implementing distributed systems. Following an MDA approach to software development, the Enterprise Fondue method proposes a hierarchy of UML profiles as a means for addressing middleware-specific concerns at different MDA-levels of abstraction, along with model transformations to incrementally refine existing design models according to the proposed profiles. Tool support is provided through the Parallax framework, which assists developers in the Enterprise Fondue refinement process and enables them to modularize middleware-specific crosscutting concerns into aspect-promoting Eclipse plug-ins.