12.5 Summary

In this chapter we have taken a look into the crystal ball and predicted what the future of software development might look like when the MDA is applied on a large scale.

Although the MDA is still in its infancy, it already shows the potential of changing software development radically . Nowadays the focus of the software development process is on writing code. In the future the focus will shift to writing the PSM, and from there to writing the PIM. People will forget the fact that the PSM needs to be transformed into code, because generating the code will be automated. This is such a major change in the development process that it can be called a paradigm shift.

The shift of focus from code to models will have consequences on the software development process, the languages used to write models, and the software development tools. In the software development process, three participants can be recognized:

• The PSM creator, who is responsible for transforming a PIM to one or more PSMs.The PSM creator will be the one that uses transformation tools. He will choose the right transformation for the job and parameterize it.

• The transformation definition developer, who is responsible for creating and maintaining transformation definitions. The transformation definition developer will need a specialized environment to create, edit, and test his transformation definitions.

• The PIM analyst, who is responsible for creating and maintaining PIMs. The PIM analyst will need better modeling tools. But most of all the PIM analyst needs better modeling languages.

New modeling languages suited for MDA will be defined. They will allow full specification of a system, including both static and dynamic aspects. Such a language will have the same status as the programming languages of today.