Authors:
Jan Ernsting
1
;
Christoph Rieger
1
;
Fabian Wrede
1
and
Tim A. Majchrzak
2
Affiliations:
1
University of Münster, Germany
;
2
University of Agder, Norway
Keyword(s):
Reference Architecture, MDSD, App, Mobile, Mobile App, Business App, Architecture.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Artificial Intelligence
;
Biomedical Engineering
;
Collaboration and e-Services
;
Complex Systems Modeling and Simulation
;
Data Engineering
;
e-Business
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Health Information Systems
;
Integration/Interoperability
;
Interoperability
;
Knowledge Management and Information Sharing
;
Knowledge-Based Systems
;
Mobile APIs and Services
;
Mobile Information Systems
;
Ontologies and the Semantic Web
;
Sensor Networks
;
Simulation and Modeling
;
Software Agents and Internet Computing
;
Software and Architectures
;
Symbolic Systems
;
Web Information Systems and Technologies
Abstract:
Despite much progress, cross-platform app development frameworks remain a topic of active research. While
frameworks that yield native apps are particularly attractive, their spread is very limited. It is apparent that
(theoretical) technological superiority needs to be accompanied with profound support for developers and
adequate capabilities for maintaining the framework itself. We deem so called reference architectures to be
a major step for building better cross-platform app development frameworks, particularly if they are based
on techniques of model-driven software development (MDSD). In this paper, we describe a refinement of a
reference architecture for business apps. We employ the model-driven cross-platform development framework
MD2 for this purpose. Its general design has been described extensively in the literature. The framework
has a sound foundation in MDSD, yet lacks a generator support that fulfils the above sketched goals. After
describing the required background, w
e argue in detail for a suitable reference architecture. While it will
be a valuable addition to the MD2 framework, the discussion of our findings also makes a contribution for
generative app development in general.
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