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Wisdom and Manifestations of Software Engineering

Explore the wisdom and manifestations of software engineering through patterns, frameworks, and model-driven development. Discover the advantages and disadvantages of frameworks and their impact on productivity. Learn about the use of models in software development and research opportunities in the field.

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Wisdom and Manifestations of Software Engineering

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  1. Models in design Sriram K. Rajamani Rigorous Software Engineering Microsoft Research, India

  2. Context • Certain kinds of software built widely by people all over the world • Eg. 3 tier business applications • GUI front end • Middle-layer: business logic • Back end: database • Several instances share commonality • Similar design decisions repeated • Similar tradeoffs repeated • Similar implementation repeated

  3. Wisdom • The sum of learning through the ages; knowledge: “In those homely sayings was couched the collective wisdom of generations” (Maya Angelou) • Wise teachings of the ancient sages

  4. Manifestations of Wisdom • Patterns • Frameworks

  5. Patterns • Design artifacts from accumulated design experience • Named, classified and cataloged • “Each Pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice” • Informality part of the “culture” • To “formalize patterns” is tantamount to restricting them, and hence restricting their creativity

  6. Frameworks (1) • One person’s view on how to factor the commonality in “widely repeated” software construction • Fancy term for this is: MDD (Model Driven Development) • Features • Diagrammatic specification at a high level of abstraction as “models” • Automatic code generation • Employs certain commonly used patterns, but they are pre-chosen and pre-wired according to the tastes of the framework author • Semantics is given in terms of the generated code: • Only the framework-author knows how to use the framework best

  7. Frameworks (2) • Advantages • Improved productivity • Disadvantages • Have to “buy in” to the framework-author’s opinions • Stepping “outside” the framework is hard • Requires modifying generated code (consistency between code and model is now broken) • Requires modifying the framework itself!

  8. Frameworks everywhere • Inside Microsoft • Presentation Foundation (Avalon) • XAML based declarative data-driven UI • Workflow Foundation • XOML based declarative workflow specifications • Connection Foundation (Indigo) • Will become more declarative • Microsoft Business Solutions • Several products (CRM, ERP, Axapta) are based on models • “Whitehorse” and Software Factories projects in Visual Studio • In India • Indian SIs have been doing model driven development for some time • Mastercraft from TCS

  9. Mastercraft from TCS • TCS = Tata Consultancy Services, a “big” consulting company based in India • Model driven development framework for Enterprise Business Applications • Built from consulting experience building such applications repeatedly over several years

  10. Impressions about frameworks • Can be used best by people who have built them • Semantics are in terms of “generated code” • Understanding the semantics of the application is not easy • Mastercraft people agree that this is a problem. A quote from one of their papers: • “Model-driven development has resulted in improved productivity, better quality and platform independence [Mastercraft]. However, it has not been very successful in supporting reuse and system evolution due to inadequate modeling support for clear separation of concerns and their composition”

  11. State-of-the-art • Semantics is in terms of “generated code” • Understanding the semantics of the application is not easy • Consequence: Tools need a lot of support and “hand holding”

  12. Research Opportunities • Can modeling become a “true” programming abstraction? • What kind of programming tools are needed here? • How useful are these high-level programming abstractions? • Opportunity to work with Indian SIs (Infosys, TCS, etc) • Understand usability and give feedback • How far can modeling go? • Can device drivers be generated from higher level models? • Can some of the newer API efforts (eg. adapters) benefit from declarative modeling? • How does one design a correct “model compiler”? • Recall: it took several decades to understand traditional compiler correctness

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