I’m talking with Sébastien about MDA, in some way his actual fantasy. But this one seems to last…long enough to be more than interesting. So I looked up a bit what is this Model Driven Architecture thing. So after reading the wikipedia page, I followed his advice and run through the documentation of his favourite tool: AndroMDA. This AndroMDA introduction is quite effective to give you a global overview of how MDA can help you as a developer to save “impossible” projects or even to save the World !

Let’s say I’m almost convinced that this could be useful, or maybe more… like necessary. But I’m still incomfortable with the whole UML thing to build up your project without you. Obvious questions are:

• Am I really a good UML designer?
• Is this solution easily maintable?
• Are there all my favourite libraries included in the default cartridge? (Or should “/me-LAZY” write and share a cartridge with the community?)
• Will I get to do all my projects in less than 1 week if I start to use MDA tools?
• And last, am I still needed in the development process at all?!

So I try to find some MDA tools to prove myself there is a large adoption of this approach, here I share a couple of web links, but feel free to comment them:

• Objecteering
• Borland Together
• StarUML
• Compuware OptimalJ
• Microtool ObjectiF
• Sparx Systems – Enterprise Architect
• Taylor MDA (but this one is from Sébastien)
• Manyeta Codagen Architect (and this one is a bit obscure…)

A last link is the MagicDraw website, since MagicDraw seems to be a tool appearing in most of the MDA websites.

So it seems this MDA buzz is likely to have some fans. I should still investigate further but first I have to face UML instead of my shiny little lines of code… and I’m still unsure I could give this away to some technologic stranger who seems to code with some painting tools ! And eventually, if MDA is really worthy (as it seems to be), what is the exact connection or retations with BPM…

Edit: Even IBM was already annoucing MDA in February 2004 ! I should get less sleep