Research On Key Techniques Of Object-Oriented Application Framework Based On MDA

Many studies have been carried out from 90's of last century on object-orientedapplication framework,including research on its properties,models,tools andrelationship with other techniques.Framework is increasingly recognized as anefficient reuse mechanism and widely used in software development.But in software development practice,framework is still difficult to develop forframework designer and instantiate for framework user.Firstly,it is due to the lack offormal or semi-formal framework modeling language which can guide the frameworkdeveloper,user and tool builder.Although there are some researches on this area,theresults are not widely accepted by practitioner.Secondly,it is due to the lack ofmethod which can guide the development and instantiation of framework.The research of this dissertation focuses on these outstanding problems existed inapplication framework area.We propose a model driven architecture (MDA) basedmetamodel for framework to introduce mature methods,standards and tools fromMDA into the research of framework,and also propose a formal model based on Znotation.Finally,framework feature diagram centered application framework designand development process is presented to guide the design,development andinstantiation of application frameworks.The main contributions of this dissertationare as follows.●Proposed a metamodel for application framework based on MDA.Ametamodel for application framework and its instantiation is defined based onMDA standards.In addition with metamodel definition,a framework constraintlanguage is also introduced to refine the model of application framework to makethe model more precise.Comparing with most of other models for applicationframework,our model is framework feature centered which can raise theabstraction and reuse level.The result framework model will be more understandable for framework developers and application developers.●Proposed a formal model for application framework based on Z notation.Although MDA based model can be verified through constraint language,but itis difficult for constraint language to deduce information from existing model.To establish the formal semantics and utilize the deduction power of formalsystem,we formalize key concepts from MDA based model.Formal model isverifiable and it can be used to deduce value of framework instance variable,which can improve the efficiency of framework instantiation process.●Proposed framework feature diagram centered views to descript applicationframework.According to the proposed framework metamodel,this researchfurther proposed four views to descript application framework from differentview points,and provide guidelines on how to build them.A case study is usedto show the framework feature diagram centered application framework designand development process.●Implemented a prototype of a visual modeling environment for frameworkmodeling.Implement an Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) and GraphicModeling Framework (GMF) based visual modeling environment,illustrate howMDA tools can be used in the application framework area based on themetamodel we proposed.