Metamodel-based Editor for Service Oriented Architecture(MED4SOA)
Rudin Gjataj · NORA - Norwegian Open Research Archives · 2007
In software development tool support is essential. Since the standardization of UML and Model Driven Architecture (MDA), new approaches in the design and implementation of software systems have flourished. These approaches are specific architectures like Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) or specialised MDA flavours, like Model Driven Software Development (MDSD). In this thesis we provide a Metamodel-based Editor for Service Oriented Architecture(MED4SOA). It is a graphical modeling editor, which lays the fundamentals of designing SOA-based systems using a Domain Specific Language (DSL). MED4SOA constitutes of two main parts: the metamodel capturing the concepts of the service domain and the graphical editing framework which realizes the visualisation of the metamodel concepts, resulting in a graphical editor. The metamodel and graphical editing framework were chosen after an investigation of the state of the art for these technologies. MED4SOA is used to build models, which contain the concepts defined in the Platform Independent Model for Service Oriented Architecture (PIM4SOA), while it is constructed, generated and run using Eclipse Graphical Modeling Framework (GMF). We explain in detail the concepts captured in the metamodel and the architecture of the editor, including the underlaying technologies of GMF, respectively Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) and Graphical Eclipse Framework (GEF). MED4SOA is a collection of ideas and technologies put together to support the emerging of SOA, using principles of MDA, MDSD and Language Driven Development (LDD). Even though in this thesis we introduce a prototype of MED4SOA, its development and our experience in the process provides a precedent in the development of a graphical framework for SOA. From our experience we point out the potential and drawbacks of both PIM4SOA and GMF.