The Research On Spring-specific Model Transformation Approach In MDA

Model Driven Architecture (MDA) is an organization and management framework for models in the software development process, which is provided by object management group (OMG). System analysis, design and implementation based on MDA are completed through defining models at different abstract levels and driving the transformation among models. Generally MDA divides a software system into the Platform Independent Model (PIM) and the Platform Specific Model (PSM). MDA not only can effectively improve software productivity, enhance system portability, reduce maintenance costs of documents and solve the problem of interoperability among different softwares, but also make application models and domain models can be reused in the entire software life cycle.Model transformation, especially the transformation from PIM to PSM, is the key of MDA-based software development. It is still not standardized. Nowadays, there are many model transformation approaches and tools, such as the transformation using patterns and markings, the transformation based on graphics and so on. However it still lack of effective supports for Spring framework which is widely used in industry. AndroMDA has supported the automatic generation of Spring configuration files from the class diagrams, but it has not researched the Spring AOP which is a core part of Spring framework and can't support the modeling of PIM. At the same time, Spring-based web applications with the traditional software development method can not guarantee the consistency among analysis model, design model and the code. Besides due to the lack of modeling language which is used to describe the basic features of Spring framework, it is very difficult to carry out the Spring-oriented system modeling.This paper presents a Spring-specific model transformation approach in MDA. It uses the domain class diagrams of business systems as a starting point, introduces the web application hierarchy model to refine PIM, constructs a suitable UML profile for Spring framework and establishes the transform rules to complete the transform from refined PIM to Spring framework specific model. Then it implements the automatic generation of Spring configuration files from Spring framework specific model through extending the model transformation framework provided by RSA. To this end, a case study is also provided to show the advantage of the method proposed.Compared with the related work at home and abroad, the main contributions of this paper are as follows:⑴propose a new idea of adding the information about abstract architecture of application systems into the PIM and introduce the web application hierarchy model to refine the PIM.⑵construct a UML profile for Spring framework which can comprehensively describe the basic features of Spring framework, and make it possible to carry out the Spring-oriented system modeling.⑶design and implement a model transformation plug-in named UML to XML so as to complete the automatic generation of Spring configuration files from Spring framework specific model.