Comparison of different Model Driven Development approaches : a mobile Meal Ordering System forthe healthcare sector

Abstract

The thesis is about different approaches to model driven development. Much of the IT industries history can be summarized as a quest for faster and better methods for system development. This thesis has taken a closer look at some of the proposed methods for the future.

The first approach presented is the use of the Unified Modeling Language version 2.0 (UML2.0). UML is a standardized language used by the majority of system developers at present time. An example system is modeled in UML2.0 and implemented in Java manually. Then an automatic code compiler is tested for the generation of code from the UML2.0 models into a running implementation in Java. For this the extension mechanism profile is used in addition.

The second approach makes use of a Domain Specific language (DSL). A DSL is a language that is made for the target domain only. It is composed out of domain concepts and from these it is possible to generate code. An example DSL is made that is capable of creating different system family members of the example system.

The example system is a mobile ordering system for the healthcare sector. The idea is that patients in a hospital are offered a system where they can order and specify their daily food servings. This is both beneficial for the hospital and the patients. The mobility is handled by the Parlay API which enables communication over different heterogonous networks (IP, Mobile phone).