1. An introduction to MDA
MDA presentation
Lai Duy Ha

2. Outline
 Motivation
 The MDA framework
 Case study – triathlon project

3. Motivation
 Boring code cause by:
 Follow templates or coding style guide.
 The consistent of the system.
 The benefit of maintaining.
 Disadvantage
 Reduce inspiration of developers.
 Silly copy/paste code.

4. Motivation
 Example of one normal module:
 Insert, update, delete record in one table.
 Each field has its own validation.
 Field’s presentation (type of control, row, column,….)
 etc…
 One system may contains more than 20+ modules like this

5. Motivation
 My approach:
 Using configuration data.
 Validation.
 Layout data.
 Using template file & complier to generate
code.

6. Motivation
 Challenge
 The change of configuration data’s structure over
time.
 Need to re-construct the structure of configuration
data.

7. Outline
 Motivation
 The MDA framework
 Case study – triathlon project

8. Overview about MDA
 Model driven architecture: was
launched by the OMG in 2001.

9. MDA development process
 The artifacts are
formal models
(which can be
understood by
computers)
 Models are the core
at MDA

10. What is a model?
 A model is always an abstraction of
something that exists in reality.
 A model is different from the thing it
models, e.g., details are left out or its
size is different.
 A model can be used as an example to
produce something that exists in reality.
 A model is a description of (part of) a system
written in a well-defined language.

11. What is a model?

12. How the models are created?
 Formally, they are based on a
metamodel.
 A metamodel is simply a model of a
modeling language. It defines the
structure, semantics, and constraints
for a family of models.

13. How the models are created?
 Because a metamodel is also a model, a
metamodel itself must be written in a well-
defined language. This language is called a
metalanguage

14. Four-level metamodel hierarchy

15. Transformation
 While the models can be considered as the core of MDA.
The most important feature, that makes the MDA
different from the traditional process, is the
transformation.
 There are two types of transformation:
 Model 2 model:
 QVT, ALT.
 Model 2 code:
 using template engine such as: Velocity, Acceleo, Xpand, ....

16. Transformation
 A transformation definition is a set of
transformation rules that together describe
how a model in the source language can be
transformed into a model in the target
language.

17. The complete MDA framework

18. Outline
 Motivation
 The MDA framework
 Case study – triathlon project

19. Case study
 The sample project is the enterprise
system, which is used to tracking in
triathlon race.

20. Case study
 System architecture:
 In this case study, we only pay attention to the
communication between client-server via restful
service.

21. Generator project

22. Metamodel

23. Model editor

24. Template editor

25. Generate code

26. What’s next !!!
 Buiding custom Domain Specific
Language using Xtext.
 Modeling Java Entrerprise System
using mod4j.

27. References
 Kleppe, A. G., J. Warmer, et al. 2003 MDA Explained:
TheModel Driven Architecture: Practice and Promise,
Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc