Model-Driven Tool Integration with ModelBus

Christian Hein, Tom Ritter and Michael Wagner

Fraunhofer Fokus, Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 31, 10589 Berlin, Germany

Abstract. ModelBus is a tool integration technology which is built upon Web

Services and follows a SOA approach. ModelBus facilitates the orchestration of

modeling services which represent particular functionality of tools acting on

models. This demonstration paper summarizes the key concepts of the Model-

Bus technology and presents an outline of a scenario where ModelBus has been

applied in an industrial context.

1 Introduction

In large distributed model driven development processes it is a difficult undertaking

to maintain a conglomerate of different analysis, development, and documentation

tools. Keeping data up to date and consistent across a whole development team is

another important challenge. Using an extensible IDE with a set of plug-ins does

only partially do the job. Firstly, there are still a number legacy tools which need to

be part of a tool environment and secondly, the coordination of the interaction and

workflow in a development team needs to be addressed. Standards like MOF are

concerned with the problem of data storage and handling but not of data distribution.

Regarding tool integration a lot of theoretical work has already been done. In the

late 80s Wasserman described the five dimensions of integration: Platform, Presenta-

tion, Data, Control and Process [1]. Thomas and Nejmeh extend the approach of

Wasserman by experiences with framework services and integrated environments [2].

In 1989 a reference model has also be introduced [3] with the aim to provide a com-

mon standard for the development of software engineering environments. This refer-

ence model has also been used by the European Computer Manufacturers Association

(ECMA) [4]. The general idea of services to provide operations on models has been

described in [5,6].

A lot of technologies have been used in order to facilitate tool integration. The

most common technologies are CORBA [7], Web Services [8], ESBs [9] or Java RMI

[10]. New technologies like IBM’s Jazz [11] do not only focus on tool integration but

also on team collaboration. Tools like MOFLON [12] or CDO [13] see models as the

main development artifacts and propagate a model-driven tool integration. However,

no listed approach deals with all the problems of a model driven tool integration with-

The work in this paper is partially supported by the European Commission via the MODELPLEX project,

co-funded under the “Information Society Technologies" Sixth Framework Programme (2006-2009).

Hein C., Ritter T. and Wagner M. (2009).

Model-Driven Tool Integration with ModelBus.

In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Future Trends of Model-Driven Development, pages 35-39

DOI: 10.5220/0002174800350039

 SciTePress

in a complex development process in which diverse requirements must be addressed

like process automation, distribution, user management, model consistency or model

scalability.

ModelBus is a solution which aims at overcoming the limitation of existing ap-

proaches. It allows the integration of heterogeneous tools covering the whole devel-

opment lifecycle and comprising custom-made, proprietary tools as well as COTS

tools. With the help of specific adapters it is possible to connect tools to the Model-

Bus allowing them to share data via models and functionality via services. In the

context of the EU Project Modelware [14] a first prototype has been developed under

the term ModelBus. Due to some lacks in the design and implementation a revised

ModelBus has been designed. This new ModelBus is hosted as an open source project

at www.modelbus.org. This paper summarizes key concepts of this new ModelBus

and it points out the major benefit of its SOA based approach. In addition, it outlines

a development scenario which is been used in an industrial use case of the Modelplex

[15] project.

2 ModelBus

The main goal of the ModelBus framework is to bring model awareness to Service

Oriented Architectures (SOA) [9]. This is archived by extending Web Service inter-

faces on the Application Level to create Modeling Services. These Modeling Services

support advanced features necessary for distributed programs dealing with models

like scalability (load on demand, incremental loading), consistency, metamodel and

model discovery as well as dependency, version and transaction management. How-

ever, this is done transparently for the application developer.

Fig. 1. ModelBus Interaction Pattern.

ModelBus provides an interaction pattern in order to enable model sharing in a

distributed and heterogeneous model-driven development process. Figure 1 depicts

the general interaction pattern in a ModelBus integration scenario.

The key concept of model sharing in ModelBus is realized via a model repository.

This repository interface is open and allows straight forward addressing of models via

URLs. This addressing schema also results in simple service interfaces, because only

model references instead of models are transmitted. Repository vendors can imple-

ment this interface in order to be ModelBus conform. ModelBus itself is delivered

with a built-in model repository, which supports versioning, partial check-out of

models and coordinates the merging of model versions and model fragments.

In a model-driven development process a number of recurrent tasks must be per-

formed like model transformation or model verification. To increase the efficiency of

the underlying development process it is vital to reduce the amount of manual devel-

oper intervention needed and to introduce as much automation as possible in particu-

lar for long running tasks like model simulation. For this purpose ModelBus allows

the definition of single tasks as modeling services and to orchestrate them together

with other modeling services. These orchestrations can automatically be triggered

either by user commands or by other orchestrations.

One of the major problems when dealing with complex models is to keep track of

all incoming and outgoing references (e.g. profiled UML models or diagram models).

As models grow larger and larger it becomes more and more difficult to coordinate

the workflow in a way that permits concurrent work on different parts of a model.

The built-in ModelBus model repository addresses this challenge. Moreover, the

ModelBus notification system can be used to stay informed about the changes applied

to a model by other developers.

Currently a number of tool adapters are already available. The set of ModelBus-

connected tools will be extended by developing new corresponding ModelBus adap-

ters. The organization, the execution and the control of the development process via

BPNM [16] has been implemented utilizing Intalio [17]. Through the adaptation of

Adaptive Repository [18] an alternative repository implementation has become avail-

able.

3 Example Development Process

The ModelBus technology outlined in the section above has been used for the realiza-

tion of a distributed development scenario, which has been applied by partners in the

Modelplex project. In this process several hundred developers of different develop-

ment teams working in different locations are collaborating (see Figure 2). Specific

requirements had to be obeyed regarding access control and model scalability implied

by the complexity of the models involved in this scenario. Furthermore, certain activi-

ties of the development process have had to be automated. This has been realized

using orchestration and notification provided by ModelBus.

In the example development process two development tools are used; Intalio De-

signer for BPMN modeling and Rational Software Architect (RSA) for UML model-

ing. In addition to this, a BPMN-to-UML transformation based on ATL is used as

well as model verification based on OCL, to verify BPMN models according to de-

sign guidelines like naming conventions. All models, development artifacts, model

transformations, and verification rules are stored within the ModelBus repository. For

the automation of the verification and transformation a COTS tools is used. The or-

chestration is deployed as BPEL to an application server in which the ModelBus

repository, the verification, and the ATL transformation engine are running (in Fig.2.

see Node Paris 2).

Fig. 2. Distributed Development Process.

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