The Metalevel

Hello everybody!

I want to share with you a set of videos to show what I understand when talking about Forward Engineering applied to MDD.

First of all, a legal disclaimer: my apologies for the quality of the videos and for my rusty English: I am starting to play with video editing tools and recording software so I expect to improve my recording and editing skills on the way. Anyway, I found (I hope) they have enough quality to explain the main ideas. So seeing it is totally up to you! You have been warned! 

Also note: see the videos in High Quality mode (HQ) in Youtube. Otherwise, details of the samples probably will not be visible.

In a previous post I introduced a sample of the code that can be generated from a very basic conceptual model. I have created three videos to show you the main steps involved.

1. Modeling (Video 1/3). The first video uses a minimalistic class model created inside Visual Studio 2005 with Microsoft DSL Tools. The sample creates a basic blog structure in less than 5 minutes. Note that in the specification there are no technological choices (neither the types are bind to a concrete language representation).
2. Code Generation (Video 2/3). A quick step: Selecting a code generation (selecting a target architecture), fixing the design choices offered by the code generation and pressing the red button: Generate! A full .NET Solution is generated in less than 5 seconds ready to compile.
3. A quick code review of the generated code (Video 3/3). Finally, I am sure you have curiosity to take a look to the output code, don’t you? This third video shows a walkthrough to show:
   • DB Scripts (table creation, foreign keys, drop scripts)
   • Database creation
   • Logic layer: POCOs (Plain Old CLR objects), NHibernate mappings and a Business Service Layer with fully functional CRUD operations.

So this is it. It is a proof of concept of how fast and direct MDD tools can be starting from a minimalistic model.

When talking about using or buying modeling & code generation products my advice is:

• Don’t use models just for documentation. They will be outdated soon or later. On the contrary, a living (generating) model is always in sync with its target application.
• Don’t resign yourself to just using code generation of skeletons. As you just have seen the current technology allows you to generate much more.
• Don’t be content if anyone try to sell you a model too close or tied in any way to a given target language. Today we have just generated C#, but tomorrow may be we prefer Ruby? Python?
• Don’t resign yourself to use a tool married with a specific database. You know, technology changes faster that we usually expect.

After coming back to Valencia from Montevideo, I’ve found the time to organize my ideas and explain as promised what I saw there.

As commented before, my expectatives were exceeded. The Genexus Event organized by Artech has a great quality level: more than 3.600 participants, having more than 120 sessions in tree days. I’m impressed! These kinds of things are not improvised, and the organization did a wonderful job for the event. Congrats!

In this post I will comment about the things I saw and liked (specially sharing the links to the videos and abundant material) and about my, now, better understanding of the tool Genexus.

Note: There is a some of material with on-line translation to English, the rest is only in original version (Spanish).

More… »

This is the video for the talk given during the Genexus 2009 Meeting on Monday in Montevideo titled “Estado del arte de MDD.” (In Spanish)

Video filmed and shared on-line by cortesy of GeneXus.

See the video in two flavours:

• Original session, audio in Spanish.
• Session with audio in English.

Estado del arte de MDD (Model Driven Development ). Pedro J. Molina – Capgemini. from GeneXus on Vimeo.

Mark posted a video summarizing this edition of Code Generation.

Thanks for sharing it!