Study On MDA Software Modeling Technology Based On Meta Model

With the expansion of software application scale and the rise of software application requirements, software development has undergone a process from Assembly Language to high-level Language and from Procedure-Oriented development to Object-Oriented development. Nowadays, with complex and variable requirements, there exist these problems in the traditional software development, such as low software productivity, poor portability, poor interoperability and poor maintainability. Therefore Object Management Group (OMG) put forward a software development methodology, namely Model Driven Architecture (MDA). With model as the core, MDA views modeling language as programming language. By building the platform-independent model (PIM), the platform-specific model (PSM) can be obtained after model transformation, and the application code and test framework can be finally generated.In the present MDA framework, requirements are described with natural language, which is analyzed manually to build PIM. As MDA neglecting the requirement phase, the accuracy of PIM is directly affected. Aiming at this issue, the improvement of MDA's process is put forward, that is to build formal requirement models and automatically transform them to PIM, and to further realize the whole MDA's process started with requirements. The improvement of MDA's process is significant to ensure the accuracy of PIM, and the consistency of software and customer requirements. With the improvement of MDA's process as the clue, the model transformation technologies from requirement model to PIM and PIM's visual presentation was researched, through which, meta-model application method was explored.Firstly, the characters of formal B method, and the feasibility of using B method in requirements modeling was analyzed, using B method as the formal method describing requirements model was confirmed. Then, the model transformation framework and transformation flow chart was designed. Because MDA specifies XML as data exchanging format, a B requirements model complier BParser was designed, which realized the transformation from B requirement model to XML describing file of B requirements. Then, the meta-model of XML describing file of B requirements MACHINE.ecore and the meta-model of UML class diagram were designed. Based on this, with MACHINE.ecore as the source meta-model and CLASS.ecore as the target meta-model, the model transformation task was detailed analyzed, and the whole ATL model transformation rule was designed. Based on the transformation rule, the transformation of B requirements model to PIM could be realized. Afterward, an example was used to present the process and effect of model transformation, the accuracy of model transformation thought was validated, at the same time, the feasibility of improvement of MDA's process was proved.To solve PIM's hard-understanding problem after the above model transformation, based on meta-modeling tool GMF, PIM's visual presentation technologies were researched. And GMF's working mechanism and general development method were deeply analyzed, then GMF models such as graphical definition model, tooling definition model, mapping model were designed, and a UML class diagram modeling tool MyUmlModeler was finally realized. PIM transformed by B requirement model could be visualized in MyUmlModeler, that is, XML text could be displayed as class diagram through the MyUmlModeler, at the same time, and the further editing of the PIM was also supported.